I smiled at him again, then stood, stretching. "I suppose I should go to bed." In truth, I wanted to examine my little mirror and see if I could discover any magical properties, but he had ended that conversation, so admitting as much seemed gauche.
"I suppose you should." He watched me as I went to the door, and then, inevitably, said, "Amber, will you sleep with me?"
I looked back at him, one hand on the door frame, and thought of his protective hand on my waist in the ballroom earlier, and of the tremendous paw cradling my hair while I trembled. And I thought, because I could do nothing else, of his enormous size, nearly three feet taller than I, and of the beast-like proportions and angles that made up his body. "Beast," I said softly, "how would that even work?"
He murmured, "Indeed," and I left the room.
The mirror, to my disappointment, absolutely did not work with moonlight. I brought it to the balcony, filling its pane with blue-white light, and felt nothing. I polished it, rubbed its back, said silly chants, and accomplished nothing. Nor did I know what I expected to accomplish, save that the Beast implied something could be done with it. I gave up and went to bed, and in the morning, watching sunlight glow through the amber frame, chided myself for a silly goose and tried again.
It answered to my wish and to sunlight as it hadn't done with the moon. Well, of course: a pearl had all the properties of the moon, pale and luminous, with shadows in its depths. Amber was the very color of the sun, rich and gold and made of life itself, born from the scars of trees fighting to live on.
It was not, though, as powerful as Pearl's magic. The mirror's surface shimmered gold and cleared to show me little Jet studiously smearing handsful of mud all over his face, while beside him an adult's shadow dug at the earth. I cried out, but neither of them heard me. The adult stood, then stooped to collect Jet, and for a moment I saw Opal's laughing face, but couldn't hear her words or the joy in her voice as she spoke to my littlest brother. They looked happy, though, and I closed my eyes against the image, feeling both relieved to see them and saddened that the contact wasn't as intimate as Pearl's magic made it. I had felt like I was with them, then; watching through my mirror made me feel that much more removed. I would rather be fully here, with the Beast, than pretending at a half-life of my family, whom I could only see and not hear or touch.
The image swam, then focused again, this time to show me the Beast. He, with the innocence of one who had no idea he was being watched, sat on his haunches and lifted his back leg to scratch at his mane. I yelped, embarrassed to have caught him in such an undignified pose, and pressed the mirror's surface against my chest so I wouldn't see any more. A moment later I peeked again, but I saw only my own amused face reflected back at me. "Very well," I said, both to my reflection and myself, "this mirror is not for me, unless I wish to go into the Queen's service as a spy, and learn to read lips."
The mirror blurred again. I put it down swiftly, its face against the vanity, rather than see what my commentary might awaken in its surface. I didn't want to become the Queen's spy, or risk any method of contacting her; explaining that I was the latest captive at her son's enchanted palace was beyond me, and I had an itching conviction that she would somehow be able to reach through the mirror's limitations and force those confessions from me.
"Which is madness," I breathed, but then again, I lived in an enchanted castle, and what seemed like madness on the surface might be perfectly reasonable when that surface was scratched.
"Perfumes," I said to myself, and resolutely stood to check my mixtures and their scents, testing them for strength and potency. Some of them wanted rose water, and what little I had had left after the city was all but gone. I gathered a cloak and, at the insistent murmuring of the invisible servants, a scone, and went out to the gardens.
The roses, which had never stopped blooming, had grown ferocious in the oncoming spring sunshine, and now covered the garden walls in relentless color. Loose petals drifted to the ground on every breath of wind, until a carpet of color greeted my feet. I began gathering the petals in my skirt as they fell, determined to use them in rose water: I would have my perfume yet, even if the garden didn't like me picking its roses.
Behind me, and without warning, the Beast said, "I believe you're safe enough picking them now that you're a guest here."
I shrieked and spasmed, narrowly keeping my grip—and thus my collected petals—in my skirt. "Could you please make some noise!"
"Evidently not. Are you all right?"
"Fine, save for a heart seizure!" I glowered at the Beast, who failed to look at all threatened. Piqued, I pulled a rose from one of the bushes, and aside from a piercing pain where I hadn't been careful enough of the thorns, suffered no ill effects. "Why didn't you tell me I could pick them?"
"I didn't know you wanted to."
"How maddeningly reasonable." I turned my palm up, examining a startling well of blood from the thorns. "I don't think the roses like me. Does this look strange to you?" The Beast hesitated, but I thrust my hand at him, displaying the blood rising from it. "It's got a golden sheen," I insisted. "It happens every time one of those thorns gets me."
He sat on his haunches like an enormous dog and lifted one paw to not quite cup my hand. I still felt his body heat, tremendous compared to my own, and resisted the impulse to settle my hand in his and feel if the pads of his palm were as rough as they looked. "Perhaps," he said after a careful look. "My eyesight isn't what it might be, but you may be right."
I'd quite forgotten about my injury by then, so intently was I studying him from so close. He was nearly as tall as I, sitting as he was, and I could see the short, velvet-like fur on his nose. It stretched into longer tufts at the bridge, thickening to a visible depth over the brow ridges before lengthening into the coarse mane that only parted around the twisting horns that swept back from his forehead. "Where are your ears?"
The Beast drew his head back, focusing on me with apparent effort. "My ears?"
"I assume you have them. But they're not…where they belong. Bears, boars, lions, goats, antelope…everything you remind me of has ears up here." I gestured vaguely along the outer lines of his forehead and skull, where animals tended to keep their ears. "Where are they?"
Moving slowly, and still watching me as though I had perhaps lost my mind, the Beast sat all the way back on his haunches and pawed through his mane until he'd exposed an ear far more human than animal, though it swept into a pointier tip than any human had ever sported. It struck me as delicate and unsuitable for his enormous rough form. "Well. You have lovely ears."
The Beast's laughter, from this close, shook the petals of my rose. "Do I?"
"Very. And if your eyesight is poor, I think they would support glasses very nicely. Have you ever asked the servants for any?"