Hob
I thought that she would come back. I know that I told her to go and not look back, and if she had only said to me that she did not mean to return, I think that I would not have minded. I like to think that anyway. But she had sworn to return in seven days and she did not.
The seven days had passed slowly. I had not seen him since I asked him to let her go and so I spent my days alone, in the music room, in the library, in the tower, in the grounds. I walked down to the lake and looked across it into the dark forest. I walked through the rose garden and sat by the empty plinth. I was thoroughly bored.
On the evening of the seventh day I climbed the stairs to the third floor and went looking for him. The rooms were all empty, their panelling smashed and their hangings torn. For the first time I felt myself an intruder – there, where there was nothing and no one, I felt I was not welcome.
“Where are you?” I called out and heard my voice echo back to me along the empty corridor. He was not there.
I went into the tower and climbed all of the stairs, but he was not there either. I looked into every room on every floor and at last came back to the great hall. I was completely alone. I ran outside into the bitter cold air and flew down to the rose garden. No sign of him there, nor anywhere else on the grounds. I walked down the long driveway and onto the bridge over the lake, all the way down to the gates.
“Are you leaving me too, now?” he said softly, and angrily, I thought. He was standing hidden in the shadow of the gates, just inside the grounds.
“Where have you been?” I demanded. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“All week?” he asked.
“You've been gone all week?” I asked.
“You mean you didn’t notice?” he asked. With another of his sudden changes of mood he now seemed almost amused.
“I thought you weren’t talking to me,” I said, realising as I did how childish it sounded.
“No, I’m still talking to you,” he said. He was definitely laughing at me.
“How am I to know, with you?” I asked. “One minute you are angry and cruel, the next you are laughing and the next nobody could guess what you are thinking. If you think that I am childish or foolish, you are every bit as much so!”
“Foolish, am I?” he asked, his voice dangerous again. I wanted to argue that he had proved my point, but even I am not that unwise. “At least I can keep my word.”
“You mean that I cannot?” I asked.
“You did not ask where I have been this past week,” he said. "I have been here all along - I could not leave - but never where you were. I watched your sister and your friend go back to the city. I waited seven days, as we agreed. Where is Beauty?”
“The seven days are not yet up,” I said uneasily. “There are still a few hours.”
“Not an hour ago I watched your sister fling my rose back into the forest and run back up the hill to her lover,” he said.
“No. She would not,” I said.
“You told her to yourself,” he said.
“She promised that she would not,” I said. “She would not have broken her word. She would not! You must be mistaken.”
“I saw her,” he said.
“She wouldn't,” I insisted.
“She did,” he said. “If you do not believe me, you have only to wait. You are wrong – there is less than one hour left to this day. Wait with me and you will see if it is she or I who has broken faith.”
