I drew my knees up, looking to the stars again. "What role do I play?"
The Beast shook his head. "I don't know. I'm an old part of its story, now. The captive in the castle. But there is rarely more than one captive in the old tales, Amber, so by rights, you must play some other role. It's trying on its memories, the stories that it knows, to see if any of them fit you."
"Why is it telling me Queen Irindala's story?"
A truly massive sound of surprise erupted from the Beast's chest. "Irindala was my mother."
I made an incredulous sound almost as large. "But you're a Beast! Irindala only had one child, the son who was los—oh. Oh." I stared across the darkness at him, dumbfounded. "I knew you weren't always a Beast. How stupid of me."
"Oh yes." The Beast shifted on the bench, folding himself until he lay like an enormous cat, his front feet folded neatly over one another, and looked toward me levelly. "How stupid of you to not immediately realize that the monster who took you captive was in fact the queen's son who disappeared over a century ago. Whatever could you have been thinking."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
He took a breath that expanded his apparent size by half, and exhaled it in something near a growl. "Would you have believed me?"
I spread my hands, trying to encompass everything: the palace that shouldn't be there, the Beast lying before me, the servants who were invisible but extraordinarily good at procuring whatever might be desired at a moment's notice, and said, "Probably."
The Beast chuffed, the deep sound I was coming to recognize as his laughter, and dipped his head in a nod. "Perhaps you would have. I think it didn't occur to me. People rarely find their way here, and I encounter few of those who do. Much of my time is spent…" He moved a paw as a cat might twitch its tail, or a human wave a hand, as if trying to say something words didn't easily convey.
"As a Beast?" I ventured. "Without thought, without…time?"
"It was sheer fortune that I wore trousers when I first saw you," he said, as if that supported my theory. I supposed it did, at that, but it made me smile anyway. "I hadn't bothered with any kind of…humanity…for—" His gaze lifted suddenly and I said it for him, amused: "A long time."
"Quite a long time indeed," he agreed. "If I'd been more in practice I might have been less…"
"Terrifying," I offered. "Loud. Monstrous. Rabid. Enrag—"
"That," the Beast said prissily, "is quite enough. But yes. All I knew was that someone had picked a rose, and I was furious. It took me most of the way to the garden to remember how to use words."
"You succeeded admirably, in the end. Loudly. Viciously. Frighteningly. But admirably."
He gave me a look that really did remind me wonderfully of Pearl. "Must you?"
"I'm beginning to think I must. How did you end up a Beast?"
"Ah," he said, softly. "That I can't tell you."
"You don't know?"
"I can't tell you. Like the picking of a rose, like the—" He stopped himself suddenly, then began again. "There are things that must and must not be done, here. Telling the entirety of my story is one of them."
"But why?"
"Amber. I am a Beast in an enchanted castle in a forest. What other answer do you expect?"
"Well, there must be some way to tell me."
He sighed. "The enchantment will tell you, if you wander the deeper parts of the palace unguarded. The main hall, the dining room and kitchen, our bedrooms, they're safe enough, but beyond them…" His tremendous shoulders rolled in a shrug. "You should know, though, Amber…the magic will want to make you a part of its story. To make you fit into the roles it already knows. And it will try to kill you, if it fails."
"Stars of earth and fire," I said as mildly as I could. "Has that happened often?"
The Beast rose, a dark and dangerous shadow against the starlight. "More than once."
He paced toward the stairs, clearly intending to leave me alone with the weight of that information. I waited until distance had nearly taken him, then said, "Beast. We missed dinner together, so you had better ask me now. Because you have to, don't you? It's one of those musts."
He turned his head back, though we could never make eye contact in the darkness. "Amber, will you sleep with me?"
"What would happen if I said yes?"
"I don't exactly know."
"So no one ever has."
His low laugh rolled across the room toward me. "No. No one ever has. The last person I was obliged to ask was perhaps the most beautiful person I have ever laid eyes upon. Perfect, a pure paragon. He…did not take the request well."
I murmured, "Oh dear," and then more clearly, but measuredly, wondering what the cost of either answer would be, said, "No, Beast, I won't sleep with you."
He bowed his head. "I thought not. Good night, Amber."
I said, "Good night, Beast," and he left me alone in the dark.
I stayed in my room most of the next day, working on perfumes and—I knew this perfectly well—avoiding any possibility of the enchantment drawing me down a hallway and trying to fit me into a predestined place. I emerged for dinner, which the Beast, very cautiously, took with me. I accused him of having been practicing eating like a civilized person, and he allowed that he may have been, and the evening passed in a strangely pleasant manner, even up unto the asking and answering of the ritual question. I didn't press him for any further details about the castle, the enchantment, or the paragon who had not cared to be propositioned by a Beast, and retired to bed early.
Dawn seemed to come even earlier, tenacious golden glow prying through my eyelids. I pulled a pillow over my head, determined to sleep a little longer, but heard someone repeating my name with increasing urgency. It wasn't the Beast, so I thought I had to be dreaming, as the servants had no audible voices and there was no one else to talk to. Finally, though, my oldest sister's voice sharpened unmistakably, and I bolted out of bed to her snapped, "Amber!"
Sunrise was coming from my vanity. Not reflected in it, but coming from it: the room's increasing brilliance shone from mirror's amber casing, and the mirror itself had taken on a silvery light of its own. I lurched to it, hardly awake enough to focus. My own tangle-haired reflection was barely visible in it, but Pearl, with her white hair cut short again so it was a cap of flyaway curls, looked out at me as though she sat five steps away, not across half an enchanted forest. "Oh, stars of heaven and earth, there you are. I've been hissing at you for half an hour."
"Pearl?" I sat heavily on my vanity stool, too thick-headed to comprehend what I saw. "Pearl, is that really you?"
"Of course it is. Keep your voice down. The family are all sleeping."