Roses in Amber: A Beauty and the Beast story
C.E. Murphy
for Linda Hamilton & Ron Perlman
who taught me to love both my name and poetry
There is a story of a beast, and a merchant's daughter, and a curse that must be broken.
This is not—quite—that story.
I awoke to the acrid scent of smoke. Later I thought that had I not been the youngest, condemned by two older sisters to sleep nearest to the rafters, none of us might have survived. It took two servants and often a dash of cold water to wake my oldest sister on any given morning. Our middle sister woke more easily, but slept so deeply buried in duvets that I already wondered how she did not suffocate. Smoke would have gone unnoticed by both of them until it was too late.
Our brothers, all younger, slept in another part of the house entirely. They would never have known of the fire until it was far too late for we three sisters, and probably the three of them as well: by the time it reached their wing its strength knew no bounds.
The leaded windows shattered as we ran from the house, glass splintering outward. The children shrieked, especially little Jet, whose first memory might be of the wall of fire reaching toward the night sky. I carried Jasper, whose six years had taught him a great deal about running, but very little about fear, and who had rooted with terror when the flames roared toward us. We all screamed, even Father, when the roof collapsed and threw showers of sparks so high they became indistinguishable from the stars. They came back to earth as sooty streaks, though, raining their darkness on the eight of us. We stood beneath that dark rain, watching helplessly as our wealth melted in rivulets of gold and silver that ran into the gutter, as our account books and library and letters—Maman wrote so many letters!—turned from paper to flame in searing bursts, and as our gowns and suits and jewelry burned and cracked and split.
Father, whose second wife had borne the three boys, stood beside us, clutching Maman's waist to keep her upright as she sobbed uncontrollably. He did not cry; neither could I. Not with the heat drying my throat and stinging my eyes. I wondered, in fact, that Maman could, but I didn't, at the time, understand her fragility. Or ours, for that matter. Even watching all our possessions burn, I could hardly imagine we would not somehow find ourselves returned to comfort within a few hours. We would find ourselves a comfortable hotel or salon while the house was rebuilt, and look back on the fire as a terrible moment in otherwise pleasant lives. Not too terrible, though. No one had died, not even a servant, making it more of an adventure than a tragedy, and we could dine out on adventure for years.
Flint, the oldest of our brothers, who, at ten years old, came up to my shoulder, wormed his way between myself and Pearl, the eldest of our family. She glanced at him with the expression a dozen or more wealthy suitors had tried to warm into love: irritated affection, directed down the length of a stupendously well-shaped nose. I put my arm around him and he buried his face against me, arms knotted around my middle, as if he performed the role Father did for Maman, but only on the surface. I bent my head to kiss his hair, wondering if it lent any kind of reassurance.
"We'll be fine," said Opal, and if Opal said it, it was difficult to believe it would not be true. Kindness clung to her like a cloak, earnest and gentle and impossible to dissuade. She lifted Jet higher onto her hip, and spoke to him in a reassuringly soft tone. "Amber saved us, and we cannot have been spared for nothing."
"I woke everyone up," I said, all but beneath my breath. "Save for with Pearl, that's hardly a heroic measure."
Flint snorted a laugh against my ribs, and Opal's bright-eyed mirth made a perfect counter to Pearl's withering look. She breathed out once, visible in the darkness, and turned her gaze back to the fire that refused to gutter. That breath made me realize the cold, a cold I had not felt or even imagined, with the flames driving us back another step every few minutes. But of course it was cold: winter had come on us weeks ago, and if there was no snow on the ground tonight, it was only because the inferno that had been our home had melted it all away. The stars beyond the rising sparks had the clarity of cold nights, even through smoke, and beneath my bare feet the cobblestones were slick with water that had recently been ice.
"Jasper." I had put him down once we were past the blaze, but now I called him to me and lifted him into my arms again. His feet, pressed against my night dress, were freezing wet blocks, and, looking down, I saw Flint shifting his weight from one foot to the other, warming the bottom of one on the top of the other. I spoke over his head to Pearl. "We need shoes for the little ones, at least."
She said, "Well, the servants—" and stopped, more flummoxed than I had ever before seen her. Together we children turned to look at our servants, who numbered half again as many as our entire family, and whose bleak faces reflected the red and orange of the flames. Later, I knew that they understood the situation more clearly than we girls did, but in the moment I could only think that for the first time in our lives, our servants were unable to simply step forward with the items necessary to our comfort. All of that fed the fire, and they wore no more shoes or coats than we did.
"The neighbors," I said, without conviction. We had neighbors, in the way that any large town estate had them: at a comfortable distance, separated by well-tended gardens and high walls. They were aware of our predicament: I had heard firebells ringing over the fire's thunder, and I was distantly aware that there were groups gathered up and down the street, but none of them had come near us. I looked to my father, whom I supposed should be heading a rescue effort for his childrens' toes, if nothing else, but I saw a man engulfed with his wife's grief, and an uncomfortable thought intruded on my mind.