“Israfel. And his kindred. They already did it. Long ago. Before you were born.” She leaned forward to tap me on my chest. “What did you think was in there, silly girl?” And she went off laughing again.
After a time, I laughed with her.
“Beauty’s in there,” she said. “In Beauty, beauty. All of it. Here in Westfaire. In the beautiful is Beauty, and in Beauty, beauty. Silly girl.” And her head sagged, just for a moment, as though she was too tired to go on. “Everything you have collected is beautiful, girl. But it was already inside you. All inside you, made tiny, like a seed. For you to keep safe, forever.”
Well, I had known that, of course. But it wasn’t enough merely to take their word for it. They might have missed something! It felt better to have done it myself.
A little redundancy never hurts. Someone told me that once. I can’t remember who.
Carabosse joined us for our celebration.
Candles. Every candle in the place alight. Music. The Bogles came from everywhere for that. Wild things. Benevolent monsters. They are a very musical people. Food, and wine, and dancing, and games. I sat quietly in the corner, writing in my book, watching them all.
It went on until dawn. Somewhere out in the world a cock crowed. Silence came, and most of the Bogles went.
Giles Edward Vincent Charming brought the sleeping Beloved downstairs and out into the courtyard. He put on my boots. He was crying as he told me goodbye, but he was sneaking glances at her, too. He will not grieve for long. He kissed me and then he went.
Carabosse kissed me. It felt like a mother’s kiss. She didn’t tell me where she was going, but I have a feeling it will not be far. She sidled into somewhere else and was gone.
Fenoderee and the others who are staying are out with the animals. Puck carried my Giles up to the tower and laid him on my bed. Giles looks much better, much stronger. This long sleep has done him good. Then Puck helped me to climb all these stairs to be with my love. Since I’ve been back this time, my legs have hurt such a lot, and of course I am very, very old. One hundred and sixteen! Think of it! I could not have climbed here without him.
From the balcony I can see the light of dawn and bright wings circling straight above. A dove, I think. Very high. On my bed, Giles snores and Grumpkin snores, little breathy sounds in the silence. When I stroke either of them, they move as though to tell me they know I am here. I sit on the edge of the bed to write, remembering Giles Edward’s question.
What will happen?
Beloved will awaken once she is out of Westfaire. He will kiss her, of course, but that has nothing to do with anything. No matter what Joyeause said about a hundred years, this spell was laid forever. Westfaire will go on sleeping. Papa will sleep, and Doll, and Martin. The aunts will sleep, and the young maids, and the young footmen and stable hands, all will sleep until the conditions of this enchantment are fulfilled and someone or something wondrous arrives to kiss beauty awake once more. Not a prince. Or not merely a prince. More than a prince. A rebirth of some kind. And not soon. Not until long after Carabosse’s clock has run down. Long after the twenty-third, I should imagine. Long after Baskarone is gone and all of Faery vanished. Long after the Dark Lord and all his minions have perished from the weight of time. The inanition of age will get him, finally, where nothing else can, and having no victims except each other will kill the rest. Perhaps in the twenty-fourth or the twenty-fifth, or perhaps long after that, life will come again. I have done everything a half fairy can to preserve it. Carabosse and I make a good pair.
And if it happens—why, then everything is here. The whales and the elephants and the radishes and the trees. Magic is here. And man, too. All those randy stable boys and giggling maids. And the Bogles. Ready to begin again. Ready to recreate what God created. And Giles, to greet me again in the morning; and I, to greet him.
And if it does not happen?
Then everything is here. Sleeping. Dreaming, perhaps, of what might have been. Perhaps others, on some other world will catch the dream, will wake from it astonished at its marvel, at its complicated wonder. Perhaps someone or something will dream who can create once more.
There is a bedtime prayer Aunt Terror taught me when I was a child. “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” Such an arrogant idea to go to sleep on, I have always thought. Why should God do any such thing, except that I’ve always loved His beauty passionately. All God’s beauty passionately.
That time, so long ago, I would not allow the Curse to touch me. I did not want to spend a hundred years sleeping. I thought it unworthy of me. I thought it monstrously unfair that Papa had let me in for such a fate. I evaded it. I escaped it, so I thought. Escaping destiny is not so easy as that. Funny, the way things work out. Even Carabosse and Israfel couldn’t quite keep it from happening the way it did. As though someone else had done the planning.
Puck is holding out his hand for my pen. And my cap. He says he will sit by me, and rub the pains out of my poor old legs. Until I sleep.
“I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
Perhaps, instead, He will keep the fire that burns here; the fire that Israfel and Carabosse set here.
Perhaps that has always been my soul.
To Malcolm Edwards,
who is wisely
responsible for
these
