Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

Author:Robin McKinley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497673694
Publisher: Open Road Media

CHAPTER

9

Her dress that evening was dark green, with long close-fitting sleeves buttoned with many tiny buttons, and a high neck, and round it went a wide necklet of great square emeralds, each as large as the palm of a child’s hand. There were emerald drops for her ears that were so heavy she was not sure she could wear them all evening; when she had put them on and turned her head, the tiny spray of opals and peridots that hung below the emeralds brushed her shoulders. There were two heavy emerald wristlets whose clasps closed with small substantial snicks like the locks of treasure vaults; her shoes were so stiff with the gems sewn closely all over them she could barely bend her feet. When she leant down to pick up a dark green bath towel and hang it over the back of a chair, she creaked. “All I need is—let’s see—a tiara, and perhaps a cape, sewn all over to match the shoes, and I will be too ponderous to move,” she said, “and you will have to send a coach and four to transport me to the dining-hall.”

There was a sudden wild sibilance from inside the wardrobe, and she started. “That was a joke!” she said hastily; her voice had gone all high and thin. She turned and half ran—tittupping in her unyielding shoes—through her rooms to the chamber of the star; there her shoes made a dramatic, resonant clatter, as if the coach and four were there, waiting for her, invisible but not inaudible.

“Oh dear!” she said. “No more jokes!” She ran across the star and through the door that opened for her, and at once her shoes were muffled by carpeting. “Maybe that is the trouble with this place,” she said. “No sense of humour.” But her words were muffled even as her shoes were, and she began to feel her spirits muffled too; and she went on silently to the dining-hall, where the Beast silently waited.

She sat down, tasted the wine the Beast had poured for her, and resolutely began to eat. She was not going to miss any more dinners. The shadows that were the Beast caught at the corner of her vision. She only knew he was there because she had seen him sit down; he sat as still as some great predator waiting for his prey. The tinkle of her cutlery hid the sound of his breathing, as the mutter of dry leaves underfoot might hide the hunter’s. She tried to recall the mood of the morning. “Do you go every day to the orchard?” she said.

“Yes. I spend much of each day there. Nights I spend on the roof.”

Beauty said, astonished, “But when do you sleep? And does not the weather trouble you?”

“I do not sleep much. And the weather troubles me little … in this shape. It is harder on my suits of clothing. The magic can turn the weather too, when it chooses. I prefer it to come as it will; mostly I have my way in this.

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