Even my makeshift bird feeder was successful. On the very first day I noticed that the seed had been disturbed, rearranged into little swirls and hollows that, I thought hopefully, were more likely to have been caused by birds’ feet and beaks than by errant wind; although in this castle one was never sure. But the next morning I saw a tiny winged shadow leave the sill as I approached the window; and at the end of two weeks I had half a dozen regular visitors I recognized: three sparrows, a chaffinch, a little yellow warbler, and a diminutive black-and-white creature with a striped breast that I didn’t recognize. They grew so tame that they would perch on my fingers and take grain from my hand, and chirp and whistle at me when I chirped and whistled at them. I never saw anything larger than a dove.

The weather over these enchanted lands was nearly always fine. Spring should have a good grasp on the world where my family still lived; there would be mud everywhere, and the trees would be putting out their first fragile green, and the shabby last year’s grass would be displaced by this year’s fresh growth. At the castle, the gardens remained perfect and undisturbed—by seasonal change, animal depredations, or anything else. Not only was there no sign of gardeners, visible or invisible, but there was never any sign of any need for gardeners; hedges never seemed to need trimming, nor flower beds weeding, nor trees pruning; nor did the little streams in their mosaic stone beds swell with spring floods.

The outlying lands where Greatheart and I rode were touched with the change of season; the snow patches disappeared from the ground, and new leaves appeared on the trees. But even here there was little mud; the ground thawed and grew softer under the horse’s hoofs without turning marshy, and there was little dead vegetation from past seasons, either underfoot or on the bushes and trees. The fresh young green replaced nothing brown and weary, but grew on clean polished stems and branches.

Occasionally, however, it did rain. I woke up one morning a little over a fortnight after I first arrived, and noticed how dimly the sun shone through my window. I looked out and saw a gentle grey but persistent rain falling. The garden glimmered like jewels under water, or like a mermaids’ city of which I was catching fantastic glimpses beneath the surface of a deep quiet lake. “Oh,” I said sadly. This new vision of the castle and gardens was beautiful, but it meant postponing our morning walk. I dressed and ate slowly, then wandered listlessly downstairs, thinking to walk about a little indoors, and perhaps make a conciliatory visit to Greatheart, before settling down to a long morning of study.

The Beast was standing at the front doors, which were open. He stood with his back to me as I walked down the curved marble staircase; for a moment I thought he looked like Aeolus, standing at the mouth of his thundery cavern on the mountain of the gods; a warm wind sang around him, and came up to greet me on the stairs, smelling of a green land at the end of the world. As I reached the ground floor he turned around and said gravely, “Good morning, Beauty.”

“Good morning, Beast,” I answered, wondering a little, because I had only seen him in the evenings before. I walked down the hall and came to stand beside him in the doorway. “It’s raining,” I said, but he understood the question, because he answered:

“Yes, even here it rains sometimes.” As if he thought there was need for some explanation, he went on: “I’ve found that it doesn’t do to tinker with the weather too much. The garden will take care of itself as long as I don’t try to be too clever. Snow disappears in a night, you know, and it’s never very cold here, but that’s about all. Usually it rains after nightfall,” he added apologetically.

“It does look very beautiful,” I said. I knew by this time that his kindness was real, as was his interest in my welfare. It was very mean of me to boggle at rain, and it showed how selfish and spoiled I was becoming through having my least whim granted, “All misty and mysterious. I’m sorry I was sulky; of course it has to rain, even here.”

“I thought, perhaps,” he said hesitantly, “that you might like to see a bit more of the castle this morning, since you can’t go out. I believe that there is quite a lot that you have missed.”

I nodded and smiled wryly. “I know there is. I can’t seem to keep the corridors straight in my head somehow, and as soon as I’m hopelessly lost, I turn a corner and there’s my room again. So I never learn anything. I don’t mean to complain,” I added hastily. “It’s just that I get lost so very quickly that I don’t have the chance to see very much before they—er—send me home again.”

“I quite understand,” said the Beast. “The same used to happen to me.”

Two hundred years, I thought, watching raindrops sliding slowly down the luminous pale marble.

“But I know my way around rather well by now, I think,” he continued. There was a pause. The rain seeped into the raked sand of the courtyard till it sparkled like opal. “Is there anything in particular that you would like to see?”

“No,” I said, and smiled up at him. “Anything you like.”

With a guide, the great rooms that had blurred into surfeit before my dazzled eyes during my solitary rambles became clear again, full of individual wonders. After some time we came to a portrait gallery, the first I had seen in the castle; all the paintings I had looked at thus far had avoided depicting human beings in any detail. I paused to look at these more closely. The men and women were most of them handsome, and all of them very grand. I knew little about styles and techniques of painting, but it seemed to me that they were a series, extending over a considerable period of time, possibly several centuries. I thought I saw a family resemblance, particularly among the men: tall, strong, brown-haired and brown-eyed, and a bit grim about the mouth, and they all had a certain proud tilt of eyebrow and chin and shoulder. “This looks like a family,” I said.

There were no recent portraits; the line seemed to have stopped a long time ago. “Who are they?” I said, studying the picture of a pretty woman, golden-haired and green-eyed, with a silly fluffy white lap dog, and trying to sound casual; it was the secret that hid behind the men’s eyes I really wondered about.

The Beast was silent so long I looked at him inquiringly. It was more difficult to gaze at him steadily again after looking at all the handsome, proud painted human faces. “They are the family that have owned these lands for thousands of years, since time began, and before portraits were painted,” he said at last.

He spoke in the same tone of voice that he had used in reply to all my other questions, yet for the first time in several days I was reminded of the undercurrent of thunder in his deep harsh voice, and remembered that he was a Beast. I shivered and dared ask no more.

I looked longest at the last painting in the long row: Beyond it the wall was decorated with scrolls and hangings, but there were no more portraits. This last one that held my attention was of a handsome young man, of my age perhaps; one hand held the bridle of a fine chestnut horse that was arching its neck and stamping. There was something rather terrible about this young man’s beauty, though I could not say just where the dreadfulness lay. The hand on the bridle was clenched a little too tightly; the light in the eyes was a little too bright, as if the soul itself were burning. He seemed to watch me as I looked at him, watch me with all the intensity of those eyes; the other portraits I examined had flat painted eyes that behaved as they should, vaguely refusing to focus on their audience. For a moment I was frightened; then I raised my chin and stared back. This castle was a strange place, and probably not to be trusted, but I trusted the Beast; he would not let me be bewitched by any daub.