Skin Deep

Chapter seven: roses and the maze

She stiffened. "When they heard of the fate that had befallen me, they chose not to return. They live in their summer home, up in the Alclarian Mountains."

Beau didn't need to ask if they ever wrote, ever sent word to check on her: the answer he would receive was clear from the flat, emotionless way she spoke about them.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

The beast drew back, her grim, bloodless lips pursed together. "I didn't ask for your sympathy," she snapped before stalking back to the castle, leaving Beau alone with only cursed flowers for company.

Beau found himself looking for the beast in the library that afternoon, but she wasn't there; only the books and the portrait, it's princess glaring down at him, her eyes accusing. "I'm sorry," he whispered to her, before leaving the room without a book for the first time.

He almost didn't go to dinner that night: he teetered on the threshold of the room, his feet not quite willing to cross the line that would bring him back into her icy presence. After the cold rebuff he'd received that afternoon, dinner alone in his bedroom was sure to be more pleasant. But if he backed off now, they'd never reclaim the ground they'd covered already. They would go back to being strangers in a surreal castle flat share.

He took a deep breath, and entered the dining room.

She tensed when she sensed him enter. He was beginning to learn the silent language of her bewitched body; the way she balled her fists when she was trying to control her temper; the way her shoulders relaxed when she was recommending a book she enjoyed. This tension was new: she was worried he would bring up their conversation from the rose garden, hinting at a weakness she refused to acknowledge the existence of. He wouldn't mention it again, but his mind had erased all other conversation topics - he couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Were you close to your father?" the beast asked, surprising him by breaking the silence.

Beau thought for a moment before replying. "I love him very much, but I'm not sure I would say we're close. He can be reckless - he acts without thinking through the consequences of the decisions he makes. It made him an extremely unsuccessful business man."

"But you gave up your freedom for him, why?"

"Because it was my fault that he took the flower - if I hadn't asked for it, he would have left here in the morning without triggering the curse. And I have a big family - I couldn't leave my sisters without their father."

"If he's as reckless as you say, would they not have been better without him?"

Beau shook his head. "No. I had a practical use - I kept food on the table, I kept them warm - but those were things anyone could do. My father may be reckless, but he loves with his whole heart and is always trying to make others happy. No one could have replaced him in my sisters' lives."

"It sounds like you're selling yourself short," the beast replied, so quietly that Beau thought he must have misheard her. "Can you pass the salt, please?" she asked.

Yes. He had definitely misheard her.

That night, he dreamt again. The princess was ahead of him, her dress of lilac gossamer flaring out behind her as she rushed between the rose bushes. Her fingers brushed against the blooms as she passed, feather light touch leaving the soft petals in tact. Her hair was strewn with rose buds of the palest violet.

"Wait!" Beau called out to her as he rushed to catch up, but the princess merely increased her pace, vanishing through a gap in a hedge Beau had never seen before.

He dashed after her, his heart racing in time with his feet. If he could catch her, he could help her. He knew it. Could feel the truth of it thrumming through his veins, spurring on his movement.

He passed through the gap the princess had vanished through and found himself surrounded on all sides by towering hedges of green. Two paths lay ahead of him. A maze. He was in a maze.

His eyes caught on a flash of lilac disappearing down the end of the left fork. He followed it. "Slow down," he called out as he ran, his breath coming out in gasps. He was pushing his body to the brink of collapse, his limbs screaming with protest at the exertion. So why wasn't he catching up? "I want to help you!" He panted out, not daring to stop and catch his breath.

The sky above grew darker as he plunged further into the maze. Clouds of indigo and ebony drew battle lines across the air, readying themselves to collide. The world shrunk to the dense hedges pressing in in either side of him, closer, much closer, than they had been at the maze's mouth. The ground beneath his feet had grown treacherous and gnarled, with insidious roots poised to trip his racing feet. But still he followed.

Beau stumbled as the princess glanced back over her shoulder, the sky-bright eyes that had so transfixed him in the library assessing her pursuer. She nodded, finding him worthy of whatever quest she was leading him towards, then she and her ethereal dress slipped through a gap in the hedges up ahead, a single violet bloom falling to the floor to mark where she had turned.

Beau slowed to a stop, his body seeming to realise that he no longer needed to rush. Whatever was around the next bend would wait for him; he need only gather the courage to face it. He picked up the fallen rose, caressing the soft petals with his fingers. It was cold and lifeless beneath the blood thrumming in his palms.

He took a deep breath to steel himself, then followed the princess into the centre of the maze.

A large open space spread out before him, walled in on all sides by hedges. He was stood at the only entrance. The only exit.

And in that centre of that space, dressed in a veil of midnight violet, her shroud a perfect portrait of the dark sky above him, was not the princess, but the beast. 

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