Page 45 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

The bear remained silent.

“If I’m right,” continued Miss Penworthy, honestly a little smugly for my tastes, and I am generally a great admirer of smugness, “say nothing.”

“I’m older than nineteen.”

A faint twinge of hope stirred in Miss Penworthy’s breast. “Are you, by any chance, slightly-but-not-inappropriately-older than nineteen?”

“Is there, by any chance, a way we could pretend this conversation never happened?”

Not quite knowing why, Miss Penworthy grinned to herself. “No.”

In the darkness, it had been difficult for Miss Penworthy to spot the moment when she and the bear had left Cornwall and entered, for want of a less ambiguous term, Elsewhere. For those of you who are following such things, they had not passed down the middle road into my Lord’s country, nor that of his despised lady counterpart. They were in neither Heaven nor Hell but in some interstitial region that largely resembled the mortal world, and followed most of its physical laws, apart from the laws about bears not talking and not living in England.

And those laws have always been mostly guidelines, anyway.

In this strange not-Cornwall they found themselves in, the bear carried Miss Penworthy to a long, exposed causeway over an otherworldly sea, and there to a spire of rock that stretched far to the sky and at last to a castle that should, by all logic and reason, not have existed.

A pair of double-doors, inscribed with intricate scrollwork and images of doves, swung open at their approach.

“Welcome home,” said the bear.

* * *

It had been, Miss Penworthy reflected that night in her chamber, a very peculiar evening. So peculiar, in fact, that being asked to marry a bear had turned out to be the least peculiar part of it.

The castle to which the bear had brought her was quite empty, or at least, it was empty of servants. But it overflowed with riches and luxuries the likes of which Miss Penworthy had seldom seen even in the homes of her most affluent friends. They had dined together that evening, she selecting from a banquet laid by unseen hands and – now she thought back on it – leaning rather heavily on figs and oysters, while the bear tore into the carcass of a deer at the other end of the table.

It had actually been surprisingly companionable.

After the meal, she had been given a tour of the building and, what with the utter lack of bear imagery anywhere in its labyrinths of galleries, drawing rooms, libraries and non-specifically decorated halls, Miss Penworthy was growing increasingly convinced that it hadn’t been originally intended for ursine habitation.

Her own room was as sumptuous as the rest of the palace, with a fire burning merrily in a marble fireplace, silk sheets adorning a vast four-poster bed, and a side-table laid with fresh fruit and cool water in case she should feel hungry or thirsty in the night. There was even – and this especially delighted her – a writing desk with ink and paper, and a bookshelf lined with an extremely good collection of sensationalist fiction.

When the bear had left her, she had been almost disappointed. After all, one was meant to sleep with one’s spouse and while she had no particular desire to doink an apex predator, she still remembered the warmth of its fur and privately wondered if she might not have liked the companionship, at least.

Having acquainted herself with the trappings of her room and amused herself as best she could with the amusing parts of it, she changed – aided by the same invisible force that took care of all the rest of the castle’s chores – into her nightdress, snuffed the candles, and went to bed.

* * *

Miss Penworthy had never been a heavy sleeper, so when the door opened, it stirred her.

The night was pitch-black, and even with her eyes accustomed to the darkness she could make out little more than shapes against shapes in an endless, lightless space as something, or someone crossed the room towards her.

“Is that you, bear?” she asked the night.

“Yes,” came the answer – although the voice was different now, the same intent through a more slender throat and a more delicate jaw – “and no.”

When the figure slid into the bed beside her, the weight was all wrong for a beast. The mattress hardly moved at all and when she reached out to feel what was there, she felt hands reaching back to her. Soft, human hands. And the hands, Miss Penworthy soon learned, were attached to wrists, which were attached to arms and shoulders and a body that moved against her so very carefully that she was almost put out by its restraint.

“Who are you?” she whispered to the shape that was now lying a breath away from her in the night.

“A bear,” the shape replied, “and a princess. And your wife by the only law that matters in this place.”

There was a part of Miss Penworthy, a solid, sensible, reasonable part, that had a whole lot of questions. But there was a much larger, much less sensible and increasingly less solid part that could not conceivably have cared less. She put her arms around the princess, pulled her as close as she was physically able, and kissed her with a hunger that had been building unsated for as long as Miss Penworthy could remember.

Long-time readers of my tales will know that I care little for the details of mortal physicality. I live in a world that is made of symbols, runs on metaphors, and sometimes suffers disruptions due to allegory shortages. The tedious question of which bit of flesh does what to which other bit of flesh is no more of interest to me when mortals fuck than when they piss. They are both, ultimately, messy biological processes that in my former, timeless existence in my master’s court I did well without.