Kissing the Witch Read Free Page B

top of the steps, back to the light, swaddled in
darkness. I strained to see the contours of the mask. I imagined a different deformity for every layer of black cloth.
    The voice, when it came, was not cruel but hoarse, as if it had not been much used in twenty years. The beast asked me, Do you come consenting?
    I did. I was sick to my stomach, but I did.
    My father’s mouth opened and shut a few times, as if he was releasing words that the cold air swallowed up. I kissed his papery cheek and watched him ride away. His face was lost in the
horse’s mane.
    Though I explored the castle from top to bottom over the first few days, I found no trace of the missing queen. Instead there was a door with my name on it, and the walls of my room were white
satin. There were a hundred dresses cut to my shape. The great mirror showed me whatever I wanted to see. I had keys to every room in the castle except the one where the beast slept. The first book
I opened said in gold letters: You are the mistress: ask for whatever you wish.
    I didn’t know what to ask for. I had a room of my own, and time and treasures at my command. I had everything I could want except the key to the story.
    Only at dinner was I not alone. The beast liked to watch me eat. I had never noticed myself eating before; each time I swallowed, I blushed.
    At dinner on the seventh night, the beast spoke. I knocked over my glass, and red wine ran the length of the table. I don’t remember what the words were. The voice came out muffled and
scratchy from behind the mask.
    After a fortnight, we were talking like the wind and the roof slates, the rushes and the river, the cat and the mouse. The beast was always courteous; I wondered what scorn this courtesy veiled.
The beast was always gentle; I wondered what violence hid behind this gentleness.
    I was cold. The wind wormed through the shutters. I was lonely. In all this estate there was no one like me. But I had never felt so beautiful.
    I sat in my satin-walled room, before the gold mirror. I looked deep into the pool of my face, and tried to imagine what the beast looked like. The more hideous my imaginings, the more my own
face seemed to glow. Because I thought the beast must be everything I was not: dark to my light, rough to my smooth, hoarse to my sweet. When I walked on the battlements under the waning moon, the
beast was the grotesque shadow I threw behind me.
    One night at dinner the beast said, You have never seen my face. Do you still picture me as a monster?
    I did. The beast knew it.
    By day I sat by the fire in my white satin room reading tales of wonder. There were so many books on so many shelves, I knew I could live to be old without coming to the end of them. The sound
of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.
    One night at dinner the beast said, You have never felt my touch. Do you still shrink from it?
    I did. The beast knew it.
    At sunset I liked to wrap up in furs and walk in the rose garden. The days were stretching, the light was lingering a few minutes longer each evening. The rose-bushes held up their spiked
fingers against the yellow sky, caging me in.
    One night at dinner the beast asked, What if I let you go? Would you stay of your own free will?
    I would not. The beast knew it.
    And when I looked in the great gold mirror that night, I thought I could make out the shape of my father, lying with his feverish face turned to the ceiling. The book did say I was to ask for
whatever I wanted.
    I set off in the morning. I promised to return on the eighth day, and I meant it when I said it.
    Taking leave on the steps, the beast said, I must tell you before you go: I am not a man.
    I knew it. Every tale I had ever heard of trolls, ogres, goblins rose to my lips.
    The beast said, You do not understand.
    But I was riding away.
    The journey was long, but my blood was jangling bells. It was dark when I reached home. My