11
In the following weeks she didn't see much of him. His volatile mood seemed to change again. It was not that he became cold and angry as in the first days of her stay in the Dark Castle; he was still polite, kind and smiling when they met. But he has somehow distanced himself from her. He seemed to become suddenly… shy. When she cleaned, he was rarely ever in her way. He spent most of his time in his workroom – the one where he made his potions and received mysterious visitors (there was an eccentric young man with a huge hat-box, for example, and others whom she didn't have a chance to observe properly). She was not allowed to go into this room – he said, abruptly, that there was too much she could disturb if she went there, and any cleaning that was necessary there he would do himself. So, he stayed in this room, or out of the castle on mysterious errands. She was by herself a lot of time, and she felt lonely.
She started missing her family; while he was near, she barely thought of them, but now she was sometimes wondering how were they, whenever they missed her, and why didn't they enquire about her. She did promise to go with the Dark One forever, that was true – but surely that didn't make her dead? They might have sent her a letter. They might have visited – surely he would have allowed a letter or a visit? Oh well, perhaps they were too scared of him. That was only natural to be scared of him if you didn't really know him. Even she was a little scared of him before he started to show her different sides of himself, and she realized that there was much more to him then awful power, strange appearance and sneering manner and devilish tricks.
As she strolled around the castle, looking into different rooms and wondering at amazing and incredible things he collected (most of them magical, she supposed, though she couldn't fathom what could be magical about a couple of ugly marionettes, for example), she was trying to define, for herself, how she saw him. She thought of his mood swings, his baffling manner to sneer when he was angry and to disguise his kindness with abruptness. She thought of his infectious gaiety and his chilling gloom. She thought of his disturbing alien look, and of his grace. She thought of his duality, of his manner to constantly change; she couldn't help feeling that he was a man divided… at least in two, and probably into larger number of parts. She thought of his tender eyes, and of the way his body trembled when he touched her – when she fell from the ladder, for instance, and he caught her, he shook all over before he put her on the floor. She thought of his manner to lock himself in his room for hours on end, and of his stifled moans she sometimes heard from behind the door; and she thought of his manner to come sometimes into the room where she was sewing or reading and to sit there quietly, not talking, but obviously enjoying her company. At such moments her heart went out to him. She felt like coming over and sitting on the floor by his feet; she imagined how she'd lean her head on his knees, and he would, perhaps, stroke her hair. She had no idea where this image came from – nothing, but nothing in his behavior suggested he'd welcome such an action, and for her to actually do something like that would have been strange indeed. But that was what the practical Belle told herself. The dreaming Belle felt that to sit with him in such closeness and compassionate silence would have been a perfectly right thing to do. It would have comforted her in her loneliness, and it would have consoled him in his mysterious grief.
His sadness – that was what she felt was the main thing about him, the first thing she thought of when she pictured his face in her imagination or glimpsed him in reality. He was always, always sad, even when he was laughing – especially when he was laughing. When he thought that she wasn't looking at him, or forgot that she was around (it happened sometimes when he was busy spinning), a look of such complete desolation would come over him. His shoulders would sag, his lips droop, his eyes close as if he was deadly tired and it took him extreme effort to go on living. Then he would concentrate again, pick himself up almost literally, and resume normal routine with a look of inner determination. She wondered what was it that helped him get his resolve back. She wondered what was it that oppressed him so heavily.
She kept getting back to the thought that visited her on the morning when she sneaked into his room and saw him sleeping – the one about the curse. When she first started to observe him closely, she thought that his erratic manner was a mask he wore to hide his true nature. Now she came to think it was not entirely voluntary in him. He could not be one way, or the other. He could not disengage two parts of himself from one another. There was a man in him, and… that other thing, inhuman. The man seemed kind and gentle. The thing felt alien and incomprehensible; there was no way of telling how it operated, what it thought and how it would react. The man was attractive and warm. The thing was also beautiful in some terrifyingly magnificent way. Both man and… beast were inseparable, and suffered from that; the beast felt chained, the man repressed. He was forced to be like he was, forced by something great and evil. Yes, evil: for if it were not evil he would have been happy as he was. And he wasn't happy – one look at him told her as much. He was in pain, and she felt a great urge to help him – as one would want to comfort a suffering animal or a man that lost his bearings.
She wished there was a way to help – to comfort him, to free him from his burden, to save from the dark shadow that seemed to be covering his life. Standing in the vast wilderness, which she imagined her life to be, she wished she could reach out and take his hand, so that they would cross the rocky desert together.
Was it too ambitious to believe that he needed her? Wasn't she getting ideas above her station? After all, she was just an ordinary girl, a silly princess from a little kingdom. And he was… what he was.
She didn't know, and she didn't know how to learn. There were no appropriate books on the subject. God knows she tried to find out – she scanned the books in the library, looking for all sorts of magical legends and tales. The story of the Dark One wasn't among them: she had no way of knowing where he came from or when it happened. It seemed he was always there – people always talked about 'The Dark One', for thousands of years. Could it be about him? Was he immortal – eternal? How old was he?
She was too shy to ask him directly, she didn't want to offend him with impertinence. She was afraid to hurt him by asking about his 'normal' side, therefor inferring that something was wrong with him. He was a proud thing, she felt.
One day, walking around the castle, she came into one of the small rooms in the Northern tower. It was a strange room, not really belonging to the place. There was a small bed here, and a very battered rocking horse – an old child's toy. And there was some clothing – a tunic and a pair of shoes, small, as if for a boy. It couldn't have been His clothing – he was a slight man, but not that slight.
The things in this room looked unbearably sad.
Her curiosity was aflame. She felt that until she learned the mystery of this child, she'd never know peace. And, without learning this mystery, she'd never understand her master.