Chapter Seven: The Taste of Wine and Tears

The days went by quickly. Days became weeks. Weeks bled into months. Before I knew it, over two months had passed and fall had given way to winter's deadly chill. Just as Christopher had said, the roses continued to bloom brilliantly, even while snow fell heavily over the garden and covered the ground they drew their magic from. Every morning there was a new rose by my bedside and every night there was a proposal letter outside my door. I continued to reject him, yet Christopher never failed to be in good spirits each and every morning.

"Good morning." I greeted him as I trudged out to the garden. The snow was piled thickly on the ground and dusted the roses and statues in a brilliant glitter of white.

He smiled in his own strange way and waved at me from where he was working, brushing snow off of each individual flower. "Morning, Isabel." His lips tweaked slightly in their corners, as they still so often did when he said my first name. He still hadn't gotten quite used to the privilege.

"What are you doing?" I asked, sniffling as I stood stiffly in the snow. I shivered and pulled my cloak tighter around my frame to fend off the bone freezing wind. Christopher still wore his usual gardener's uniform with the trousers that were too short and shirt that was nearly all patches. He had at least begun to wear his boots, but he wore no cloak or coat. The benefits of being covered in fur, I supposed.

"Are you alright?" He asked, concerned. "You don't look well. You're very pale."

"It is just a little cold." I assured him. "I'll be perfectly fine in a few days."

"Go back in and drink some hot tea. You don't want to make it worse. I can handle things here." He encouraged me.

"I will." I assured him, smiling warmly, although my mind was foggy from a growing temperature. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. You snuck out before I awoke. We didn't get to have breakfast together." In the recent weeks, we had begun to spend more and more time together. We met at the dining table for every meal and often shared tea in the garden on the prettiest days.

I had grown to like him more than I ever thought I would. He'd long since ceased being simply my guardian, but had become a dear friend. I had yet to tell him this, but I hoped that he knew my feelings without me having to say a word.

"I'm fine, Isabel. You needn't concern yourself with me.," said Christopher, as he continued to busy his hands with removing the snow from his precious roses' delicate petals.

"There's something worrying you, isn't there?" I asked, studying his face. He kept up a weak smile, but his eyes seemed distant, as if he were seeing a far different scene than the one before him. I had come to know that look well. He was thinking of the curse and the evil woman who placed it upon him. "When something is bothering you, you can scarcely drag yourself away from the garden. What is it?" I laid a reassuring hand over one of his much larger ones, stilling it and keeping it from its work. "You know you can tell me."

"Yes…I know." He breathed softly. He patted my hand and turned away from the rose bushes. His smile reverted into a deep scowl. "I've received word that the…witch…" He growled the word in distaste "is coming to visit me for Christmas."

"Christmas? It's nearly Christmas time already?" I gasped in shock. "In this place, it's so difficult to judge time. I hadn't realized."

"Yes." He muttered as he began to pace around with a miserable expression on his face. "It's only three days away now. Not that it really matters anymore. I had hoped to spend this Christmas peacefully with you, but of course the witch has to make an appearance so she can give me my usual gift."

"What gift is that?" I asked, feeling my stomach clench strangely. I didn't like the idea of him receiving gifts from the woman who had tortured him so.

He paused in his pacing. His hands tightened into fists at his sides as he let out a heavy sigh. Beneath the escape of breath, I could faintly hear the beginning rumbles of an unhappy growl. Sheepishly, his silver eyes slowly shifted towards me until he mustered enough courage to meet my gaze. "She turns me human…for a short time. It only lasts until midnight."

"Why would she do that?" I asked, my voice trembling slightly in amazement. Intrigue gripped me. What does Christopher look like really, under that beastly façade? I wondered. Would he be handsome? Ugly? Was his hair as gold as his mane? His eyes still the same grey-blue of silver? Try as I might, I couldn't imagine him being anything other than himself, as I've always known him. "Doesn't she want you to remain a beast?"

"It's a trick. She wants to show me what I've lost by not giving in to her demands. Truthfully, I could have broken my curse a long time ago, but to do so would enslave me to her will, forever. I won't bow to her again." He shrugged and ran his clawed hand through his mane. "I suppose that's my stubbornness getting the better of me." He laughed bitterly. "You must think I'm a fool for not taking her up on her offer."

"Not at all," I replied. "I admire your resolve, Christopher. I don't think I would have been able to resist such a deal."

"It's not that I don't want to accept it, it's that I know it isn't what it appears to be. As I told you once before, I don't know what I would look like now as a human. I rid the estate of all the mirrors and have never dared to even glance at my reflection in a pool of water when I'm in my human state…but I can see the human flesh that covers my hands and hear the difference in my voice. Still, it is all an illusion. Though it may appear that I am human under that temporary spell, I can still feel the fur on my skin and the sharpness of my teeth. What she offers is a lie. It isn't worth the price she asks for. Besides, if I were to give into her, my victory would be hollow. I would no longer be a beast, but I'd still be a prisoner. If this curse is ever lifted, I want to know that I am truly free of her and her magic."

I am reminded of the empty space of wall above the small table at the staircase. I always thought that it looked like something had once hung there. It must have been one of mirrors Christopher spoke of. I did think that it was odd that there were no mirrors at all in the estate, but after seeing Christopher for the first time, I figured he was disgusted by his reflection. I never dreamed that it was his human face that he feared seeing reflected back at him. A sudden wave of pity washed over me like a ship in a turbulent ocean. "Will you still deny her this year?" I asked.

His mouth clamped shut and he stared at me in silence for a long moment. "I've…thought about it more than I have in past years. I've truthfully never been tempted more than I have since you came here."

I felt my cheeks warm at his words. Certainly, I reasoned, it was the fever. "I find that hard to believe. I imagine I'd be very tempted to stay human if I were in your circumstances."

"That is why I haven't dared to look at my reflection during the…reprieves. I'm afraid the temptation would become too great for me. As long as my human face remains that of a stranger, I have no reason to desire it. At least that is what I thought…until you came along." His features softened with a slight, barely there smile. His eyes, though they glinted in the light in a very inhuman way, were more warm and gentile than any I had seen on any normal man. "I've never wanted to be human again more than I do now."

"Because I am here?" I asked, shakily. "That's the only real reason you want your curse cured? Surely you must be lying." I shook my head with an unconvinced smirk.

"Of course I've always dreamed of having a life of freedom, away from all this magical nonsense, but those dreams have always seemed like childish fantasies. I never thought they'd come to pass. I've never had a reason to hope before." He tore his eyes away from me and stared down at the ground. I imagined he was blushing beneath his golden fur. "Honestly…I didn't really care if I was ever turned human again. Humanity has never been kind to me. I just wanted to be able to leave here if I chose to and not live in constant fear that the black magician and her ilk will appear one day to take from me what they want."

"You must want to be human. You can't exactly walk around freely, looking as you do. No offense."

"I realize that. If I stayed like this and had to trade this prison for another that would be perfectly fine with me." His eyes flashed and his sharp teeth peeked from beneath his lips as he snarled. "But I do not want to die as Rosalyn's slave." A look of fright passed over his features once the words were out of his mouth. He had let information slip that he hadn't wanted to reveal.

"Rosalyn? Is that the black magician's name?" I asked, secretly pleased that I had found out a few more secrets.

"Yes." Christopher's face relaxed. He was relieved at my question for some reason, as if I hadn't fully caught on to the secret. This instantly troubled me and made a crease form between by brows. "Who is this Rosalyn? I feel that there's something about her that you're not telling me."

He frowned down at me. "Forgive me, but I will not tell you anything more. That you know her name is bad enough."

I sighed heavily and sniffled miserably. "Is it the curse thing again?"

"No." He muttered. "It's only that I made a promise to someone, a friend, years ago. I intend to keep it. Believe me when I say that, my keeping certain information from you is for your own good. The full truth would hurt you, Isabel, and I've made a promise to myself not to ever cause harm to you again in any manner." He smiled at me with a deep chuckle and laid his large, furry and clawed hands over each of my cheeks. "Don't glare at me like that." He said. "I'm only doing this because I care about you."

My heart fluttered briefly, like a little hummingbird flapping its wings rapidly against my ribs. He cared? The words, on their own, were not that special. Friends always care about each other, but there was something in his tone that left me wondering if there wasn't more to it. Something left unspoken, but that needed to be said. Fighting the urge to bagger him about it, I decided that he wasn't ready to reveal whatever it was, like I was not ready to say that he was in fact my friend, perhaps my best friend. He'd tell me in time.

Wrapping an arm around my shoulders, he began to shepherd me back towards the house. "Now, let's get you back inside where it's warm. You're running a fever. You shouldn't be out here."

"What about Rosalyn?" I asked, focusing on slowing down my heartbeat.

"I will deal with her." He replied solemnly. "You focus on getting well so that we can have our own Christmas celebration after she leaves."

Unfortunately, I spent the next three days in a fever induced fog. Christopher restricted me to my bedroom for my own wellbeing. Despite the ache in my chest as I breathed and the weakness in my muscles, I kept sneaking out to the garden to make sure that the magic was still doing its job and that they were still alive and blooming. Eventually, Christopher began keeping watch over me, sitting by my bedside while I slept and calming me down with kind words when I awoke from nightmares about a pitching ship, violent oceans, and my father's smiling face disappearing under the waves. He even took on the responsibility of taking Foxy out for her walks and I think the two actually became fond of each other.

We spent Christmas Eve much the same way. I was feeling somewhat better. My fever had just broken, but the weakness was still with me and all I felt like doing was sleeping. I awoke from one of my naps in the afternoon. As my eyes fluttered open, I saw Christopher standing at my window, peering out at the rose covered gate. He was dressed in a dark green jacket and golden vest. His mane was pulled back with a green ribbon that matched the velvet of the jacket.

He seemed to notice the subtle movement of my hand as it moved slightly to pet Foxy as she lay, curled against my side. He turned towards me. He smiled, though I could tell by the slight dimness of his eyes that his mind was preoccupied. That night Rosalyn would come to give him his Christmas gift, a few hours of a blissful mirage, a dream that he would abruptly wake up from at the stroke of midnight.

"It'll be over soon." I said with my crackling voice. I sounded like a very old woman, trying to comfort a crying grandchild.

"What will?"

"Rosalyn's visit, she'll be gone by tomorrow afternoon, won't she?" I asked as he returned to his chair at the head of my bed.

"If God is merciful." He muttered. He whistled at Foxy, who popped her head up and turned it sideways with curiosity. He doesn't want to talk about Rosalyn. He hates her, everything about her. I thought.

I decided to turn the focus away from her, for the time being. "Will you read to me?" I asked, swallowing against the burn in my throat.

"I-I'm not good at reading, Isabel. You know that." He stuttered.

I smiled at him and picked up the small red book that was sitting by my pillow. "You won't get any better at it if you don't practice. Besides, this is just a book of poems, nothing too difficult."

He reluctantly took the book from my trembling hand and opened it up to the passage I had marked with a pressed pink rose. He began to read it slowly, stumbling over the words and stuttering like a young school boy, just beginning his lessons with a new governess.

"The Sick Rose.

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm.

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy."

When he finished he looked up at me with a grimace. "This William Blake was a morbid fellow, wasn't he?"

I smirked knowingly at him. "It's actually about how he contracted Syphilis."

Christopher burst into laughter, rolling in his seat, nearly falling out of it. I giggled with him. When I first read that poem, I thought it was hauntingly beautiful, but the meaning behind the poem is not nearly as attractive as the words sound.

"Do all girls like to read poems about Syphilis?" Christopher joked, a chuckle still ringing in his voice.

"The poem is still pretty, so long as you are ignorant of its meaning. Some things are best left unknown, I suppose. It's still good for a laugh, isn't it?" My words were barely recognizable with the taint of illness.

"It sure is." He laughed. It was good to see his spirits up. They had slowly declined as the hour of Rosalyn's arrival drew nearer. Now he was smiling and his eyes were bright and aware of the here and now, his mind no longer focused on the trial that was to come.

"You did well, reading it."

"You're being too kind. I stuttered like a fool."

"So did I when I first started learning to read. It gets better the more often you do it, just like everything else. You weren't a professional gardener when you were fist given the task, were you?"

"No." He replied, smirking as he thought of a memory. "When I first came here, the roses were wild. They were climbing over everything, threatening to swallow up the house in a cage of thorns. I spent weeks, cutting it all away from the house. By the end of it all, I was a bloody mess. My arms were mangled. I still have more than one scar on me from those days." He said and I thought about the scars I had noticed on his palms in my first few days here.

"That must have been terrible."

He looked at me and met my eyes with his own. His eyes shone like gleaming metal in the firelight that came from the little candle on my bedside table. "Not at all," he said. "I was proud of myself, for working through the pain and getting it done, when at the begging it seemed like an impossible feat."

The sound of hoof beats and creaking carriage wheels, made Christopher suddenly stiffen and fall silent. He jumped to his feet and ran to the window. "She's here." He breathed his voice low with unhappiness. "I'm sorry to leave you alone like this, but please stay up here until she leaves. I will send servants to check on you whenever I can." He said with a rush and walked quickly from the room. I listened to his footsteps until they fell to silence.

In the quiet of my room, I could hear movement from the floor above me, from Christopher's secret domain. Every now and again I'd hear Rosalyn's soft laughter and a quiver would run down my back. The sound wasn't beautiful. There was something wrong with it, though I wasn't sure what. Where was the Christmas music? Where was the smell of cinnamon and baking? Where was Christmas in any of this? It felt like just another day in this strange, magical world of witches, magic roses, and talking beasts.

"This isn't how I thought I'd be spending this Christmas." I whispered to myself. Foxy got up and moved up my bed until she lay back down on my pillow, curled up and went back to sleep. I turned onto my side and stroked her golden fur. Tears trickled from my eyes, wetting the pillow around my face. "I don't think I've ever felt lonelier." I sputtered into the pillow, thinking of my father, wishing he were there. "I miss him. I really miss him." I sobbed quietly, my voice already too hoarse to be anything more than a whisper. If he were still alive, I'd be singing songs while he played them on the piano. Afterwards we'd sit around the fire, sipping hot cider and he'd tell me a story about a beautiful girl that slept for five whole years, until her love for her fiancé helped her to break free of a jealous warlock's spell. I remembered that he used to joke that that story was all true and I would laugh and tell him how silly that sounded. Perhaps there was some truth to it, after all I was in a fairy story all my own.

It was late in the night when I felt another presence in the room with me. I figured it was one of the servants so I kept my eyes closed and tried to get back to my blissfully dreamless sleep. However, the intruder didn't immediately retreat back into the hall. Instead, it lingered. I could hear a faint, shuttering sort of breath, as if whoever it was had been sobbing for some time.

"Isabel," the being whispered softly.

I froze. I didn't recognize the voice. It was male, but it was not Christopher's rumbling baritone. It was a soft, low sound. I stayed quiet and as still as possible, trying to seem asleep. I didn't dare open my eyes. I was lying on my back and he would certainly notice. The man drew nearer and settled into Christopher's chair. I felt warm fingers on my hand. They didn't take my hand as people do when they seek comfort, but merely grazed the fingertips over the back of my hand. The hand moved to run its fingers through my hair, then it gently stroked my cheek. His touches were adoring, not lustful as I feared might be the case. I felt the man draw nearer and he leant over me. The springs of my mattress creaked against his weight. My heart began to pound in fear, as I felt the breeze of his breath touch my face. I smelled the unmistakable scent of alcohol. His lips touched mine in a chaste kiss. I tried not to flinch, to pretend to be the girl that had been trapped in an endless sleep from my father's story, even though every ounce of me was screaming to push the stranger away. I was too afraid to open my eyes, of seeing this unknown. I was afraid of what might be revealed. So my eyes remained shut and I lay there, as still as the dead as this pitiful man continued to press his lips to mine, filling my mouth with the taste of wine and tears.

He pulled away, almost hesitantly. I heard a sob escape his throat as he wiped his fingers over my lips, as if to wash away any evidence of his kiss. I felt his weight lift from my bed. Then, just as quietly as he had come, he wandered back out of my room, closing the door behind him.

The breath I had been holding burst from my lungs in a gasp. I was trembling from head to toe, pure fright eating away at my nerves. I waited a few moments, before jumping up from my bed and going to the door to peak out at the hallway.

I saw a large man walking down, towards the stair case. He sang, as he walked, the now familiar tune. His words slurred horribly with the combination of drunkenness and despair. "Rose, rose, rose red shall I ever see thee wed? Aye marry, that thou will, if thou but stay. Ah poor bird, take thy flight. Fly above the sorrows of this sad night." His back was to me, so I couldn't see his face. Thick blond hair fell around his broad shoulders. He was pitching from side to side, his legs unsteady under the obvious influence of too much wine. He trailed a hand along the wall for added support. I gasped loudly, feeling my heart flip and jump up into my chest. I recognized the green satin jacket that the man wore. It was Christopher Thorn.

"Christopher?" I called to him, stepping shakily into the hall. I made sure to keep my voice low so I would not call the witch's attention to me.

He stalled at the staircase, wobbling slightly where he stood. "Get back to bed." He said, in the stranger's voice.

My heart flipped again and uneasiness filled my belly. It had been him, the intruder who had stolen a kiss from me. For some reason, I felt my disturbance at the situation lighten. At least it hadn't been a prowler. "Why?" I began, confusion muddling my mind, making it hard to speak. "Why did you do that? Why kiss me?" I felt tears prick at my eyes. I felt more angry than hurt. I was angry, not because he had stolen my very first kiss, but because I could never return it. At the stroke of midnight, the human façade would melt away and he'd once again be a beast.

He shrugged his shoulders, turning his head very slightly. I could see the beginnings of a beard along his jaw. "Why does anyone kiss anyone?" He said, a deep sadness smoldering in his voice. I had thought that Christopher would enjoy the reprieve, but instead I found that he was much happier as a beast. In this human mirage, he exuded nothing but bitterness and sorrow. It echoed in his voice and in every move he made.

"Give me a straight answer." I hissed, the tears finally falling.

"Why? I've never given you one before. In fact, all I've done is lie to you." He groaned as just breathing was painful to him and leaned his head against the wall. "If you knew the truth, you would hate me. I know you will find it out soon. Forgive me for what I've done, Isabel. I only wanted to know what it was like to be kissed by you before you realize how much of a beast I really am."

"What are you talking about?" My voice sounded small in the empty hallway. "What have you lied to me about?" He stayed quiet. "Tell me, Christopher!" I yelled and quickly covered my mouth. I hoped against hope that the witch hadn't heard me.

Christopher ignored me and silently returned to the third floor, back to his mistress.

I retreated to my room and was troubled with a restless sleep. That night, there was no proposal letter at my door and when I awoke; there was not a rose by my bedside. I cried when I saw that the bedside table was bare, feeling as if my Christopher had died.

A light knock at my door, stirred me from my misery. I wiped my face with my sleeve and rushed to open it, hoping that it would be a servant with the rose and a proposal letter, so that I'd know that Christopher hadn't given in to the witch and was still him. Instead, I found Christopher himself, back in his usual beastly attire. I felt my lips try to smile, but it died midway there, as the crushed look on Christopher's face registered. "There is something I need to tell you. I can't lie to you anymore. I can no longer bare it." He said. His voice was its usual baritone but the sadness from last night still saturated it. His gaze slowly lifted to my face, but dared not meet my eyes. "I can't open that gate. Only Rosalyn can open it once it's been sealed."

"W-what do you mean?" I asked, panic rising in my throat. "What are you saying?"

"I have never intended to let you go."