Greatheart was throwing his head up and down, but he was otherwise quiet. Ger embraced me with his free arm and kissed my forehead. “I’ll toss you up,” he said. The horse stood as still as a stone for this operation, and heaved a great sigh as I settled in the saddle. I reached forwards to fix the rose a little more firmly. “Okay?” I said to my father. He nodded. Ger stepped back.

I turned Greatheart towards the forest edge, and he paced forwards deliberately, quiet now, and Odysseus followed. Just before I reached the trees I turned in the saddle to wave; Ger raised a hand in reply. I nudged the horse into a trot, and we broke into the first line of trees. The last thing I heard as the forest closed around Father and me was Richard’s small forlorn wailing. I urged Greatheart into a canter, and the noise of the horses crashing through the underbrush drowned everything else.

When I pulled him up at last the edge of the forest was no longer visible; I could see nothing but tall trees in every direction. Few of them were small enough for me to have reached all the way around diem and touched fingertips to fingertips. The scrub at the beginning of the forest had thinned out; there was moss underfoot now, and I saw a few violets, a few tardy snowdrops, and some tiny yellow flowers I didn’t recognize. It was cool here without being cold; sunlight dripped a little way among the leaves, but without warmth. Most of the tree trunks were straight and smooth to a height above our heads, where the broad branches began. I heard water running somewhere; except for that, and the noises of our passage—harness jingling and squeaking and occasional patches of cobweb ice that shattered underfoot—the woods were perfectly still. Father was a little way behind me, I looked up and could see little bits of blue sky, like stars against the variegated green and black and brown. I breathed deeply and for the first time for several days I felt my heart lift out of my boots and take its proper place in my breast. As Father jogged up beside me I said, “This is a good forest.” He smiled and said, “You don’t lack courage, child.”

“No, I mean it,” I said.

“Then I’m glad. I find it a bit oppressive, myself,” he said, looking around him. We went on a few more minutes, and then he said, “Look.” I could see something pale among the trees. In another minute I recognized it: It was the road leading to the heart of the forest, and the castle.

Part Three

1

I was eager to make as much speed as possible; I knew that Father was on the brink of begging me to turn back and let him go on | to the castle alone. I would not leave him, whatever he said now, but I was uncertain just how far beyond this essential determination my thin courage could bear me. I knew I would go on, but I wanted to do it with dignity; if Father said anything it was likely that I would cry, and then the journey would be a great deal more miserable than it was at present, with nothing more dreadful between us than the grim and thoughtful silence that we shared, I kept hearing Richard’s tiny crying in my mind, and seeing the gorgeous roses framing Grace and Hope and Ger as they faced the forest. I tried to feel encouraged by my sense that the forest was welcoming, not hostile, but that shallow cheerfulness seemed to ebb away as we walked onto the white road, I prodded Greatheart into a trot, and Father fell a little behind again; for a little while I didn’t have to worry about the expression on my face. I could feel that it wasn’t one I wanted him to see.

We stopped once to rest the horses; neither of us was hungry, although there was food in our saddle-bags. It was a little after noon when we saw the dense dark hedge and the huge silver gate looming up before us. The gates shimmered like a mirage in sea-fog. Odysseus, who had been well-behaved until now, shivered and shied, and did not want to go near those tall silent gates. At last Father dismounted and led the unhappy horse to die gates, but when he put out his hand to touch them, Odysseus reared and broke away. He stopped again only a few feet from Father’s out-stretched hand, looking back over his shoulder, ashamed of himself but still afraid. Greatheart stood still and watched.

“Father,” I said, as he stroked his horse’s nose and tried to calm him, “you needn’t come any farther with me. These are the gates to the castle. If you leave at once you will be home by suppertime.” My voice cracked only a very little. I was glad I could sit quietly on Greatheart, that I did not have to dismount and make my legs carry me, and that I could hide my shaking hands in the thick white mane that fell over his withers.

“Child—you must go back. I cannot let you do this—I cannot think what made me agree to it in the first place.

I must have been mad to think that I could let you go—like this.”

“The decision is long past now—you cannot revoke it; and you agreed because you had no choice.” I swallowed, although my mouth was dry, and went on before he could interrupt: “The Beast won’t harm me. And perhaps, after all, he is only testing our sense of—fair play. Perhaps I won’t have to stay long.” The words sounded well, but my voice didn’t, and neither of us believed what I was saying. I hurried on. “Go. Please. Parting will only be worse later.” I thought: I couldn’t bear to see this Beast send you away. “I’ll be all right.” I rode towards the gates, but before I had wheeled Great-heart so that I could touch them with my hand, they swung open without a sound, and a trackless field of bright green grass lay before me. “Good-bye, Father,” I said, half-turning in my saddle. Father had remounted. Odysseus was standing still, but the stiffness in his neck and ears indicated his tension and fear. One gesture from Father would send him plunging back down the road the way we had come.

“Good-bye, dear Beauty,” he said almost inaudibly. My ears rang with my heartbeats. I rode forwards before he could say any more, and the gates of mist closed impassively behind me. I turned and faced forwards before they were quite shut, and did not look back again.

Sunlight and the smell of the sweet grass were better than sleep or food; I felt that I was awakening from a dream left behind in the shadowed eaves of the forest. When we came to the edge of the orchard we found a white pebbled path leading between the trees towards the castle.

I cannot begin to describe the gardens. Every leaf and blade of grass, or pebble in the path, or drop of water or flower petal, was perfect, in plan and in execution: true in colour and in shape, unworn, and unharmed as if each had been created only a moment ago, as if each were a gem, and the polish of each facet the life’s work of a fairy jeweler. I clung to Greatheart’s mane as he went forwards at a gentle walk; the motion of his shoulders and flanks seemed like the heaving of a ship in storm.

The castle rose up before us like sunrise, its towers and battlements reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. It was of grey stone, huge block set on block; but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin’s back at dawn. It was as big as a city, I thought; not one building, but many, tied together by corridors and courtyards; I stared around at what I could see of the wings and walls of it stretching in many directions. I could not begin to imagine the number of rooms it must contain. But it stood silent, the windows dark, apparently deserted. But not quite deserted, I told myself unhappily. Oh dear.

Greatheart came to a halt before the stable, whose door had slid back at our approach. Inside, afternoon sunlight slanted through tall narrow windows with half-moons of stained glass set in their arched tops. The coloured glass held pictures of horses, standing, galloping, richly caparisoned or free of harness, with long waving manes and bright dark eyes. The bits of colour sprinkled the marble walls of the stalls and the smooth golden sand of the floor. The door to the first stall slid back, just as it had for Father, as we approached, and straw finished scattering itself into the corners as we looked in. Great-heart pricked his ears at self-propelled bedding; but when I pulled his bridle off he quickly transferred his attention to the mixed grain in the manger. He did not eat so well at home.