They say falling in love is the easy thing. And that's perfectly true. The hard things are finding the person you're supposed to be with. The hard things are staying with them after you find them, and find out that they're not the perfect, idealised versions of themselves you thought they were.
The hard things, like most things in life, are the parts you remember the most.
It's hard to say when you met the first time. Perhaps it was in Norway, when he was a great white bear, and you had to journey across the world to rescue him from the troll princess. Perhaps it was in Greece, when the gods themselves tried to keep you apart. Your memories from those times are fleeting only. The impossible task the queen of the gods set you. The golden apple, carding comb and spinning wheel. Your sisters, falling to their deaths from a rocky crag. The horror on his face when your candle showed his human form. You can never remember the ending of these times, only brief images of the trials you went through.
The first time you remember the story from beginning to end, you are in 18th century France, and you are a merchant's daughter. He is a Beast - not a single animal, but a combination of numbers of them. He is dull, but aware of his dullness, and your heart goes out to him in his isolation. Your father and sisters have to beg you not to return to him, but somewhere inside you feel uneasy, as if you've been in this situation before. A man haunts your dreams, and when you decide to stay at home he vanishes. You miss him, but you have missed your family more. When you use your mirror and see this Beast nearly dead, you run to him before you can even tell your family why you left. In the moment between your confession of love and his transformation, you realise who he is, and what happened to him. You are allowed to spend one night together - one night where the two of you remember every life you've lived, every obstacle you overcame - before you are apart. Another time, another place, another you. Another him. The last thing you know from this time, this cycle, is that your sisters lied to you when you came home. They wanted him to kill you.
The second time you know where you are, it is Czechoslovakia and something is different. You are watched more closely than before, but in a different sense. He is different, too - terrifying in a way he rarely is. You have never been this afraid of him before, and it hurts both of you to realise it. You cannot look at him, and his horror should paralyse you, but you still love him. His curse is broken, and again you have one night with him, but again you are pulled from each other to a different universe. You do not know how many times this has happened before. But it never stops hurting, not for a second.
At some point, you are in France again, and this time there is another man. He is rude and conceited, filled with a hunger for gold that all men share; but his is closer to the surface than most. Your father is a merchant once again, and your sisters are villainous also. It stings you. Just once, you wish your sisters were kind and loving, like your father believes they are.
A rose appears in this tale. Its beauty fascinates you, but also terrifies you. New elements are not often added to this story. A suitor you do not wish for and a rose present only occasionally across the ages change things. But when you find him, as you always do, you know he will never change. He loves you, and you love him, and that is what matters. His appearance frightens you again, but as always you know who he is underneath it all. He is your love, the one who knows you from a thousand stories. It makes his death tear you apart more than usual. He should have lived. He should have revived. When his humanity does appear, in the form of your suitor, it confuses you. But you cast your doubts aside. At least this time, your sisters get to join you in your happy ending.
Again in France, again with a suitor, again with a rose. Your sisters are not here, this time. You can remember all your previous lives this time, and the absence of your sisters, for the first time since this tale began, leaves you lonelier. Your literacy also excludes you from the town, but that doesn't bother you as much. You can read the old tales of how you and your love have met again and again throughout the ages. You can trust you will meet again. You father's trip to the fair sparks a little interest. Maybe today, you will meet him. Maybe today, your story will begin again.
But your father journeys safely to the fair. He mentions a time when he was unsure which path to take in the woods, but the horse took him in the right direction. You feel certain that he should have gone the other way, but you cannot say that to him. He is your father, and if he is saved the agony of not knowing whether his favourite daughter - in this time, his only daughter - is alive for months on end, then so be it. The suitor comes again, after his humiliation had time to rankle inside him. He slanders your name together with his, until the town is rife with talk. Your father can barely get any work now, and you are confined mainly to the house. The last time you entered the village, the glares and silence spoke volumes more than anything else could have. And your misery is only heightened by the knowledge that somewhere, your love thinks you have abandoned him. You do not know what the conditions are in this world. It is only rarely that there is a time limit, but sometimes it happens. You plan to set out for the woods the next day, to find the path your father should have gone down and find your love yourself.
But the next day, you are married.
It is as before, only this time more than one person enters the house, and drags you out by your hair. You catch a glimpse of your father, being cast away to the lunatic asylum. You know there is only one thing you can do to save him. So you marry the suitor. It is late autumn, and the snow falls early that year. He is not as cruel as you expected, at least not on the first day. When he does finally leave you for one of the other women in town, you realise he was never going to let your father out the asylum. So you run away from the town, as the snow falls through the air, the last chance you have to find your love.
He is hunting when you find him, a mixture of animals again, but he has bright human eyes. For once, the first emotion he sparks in you is not fear, but anger. He was wounded by prey that escaped him, and in his animal state he licks the wound. You end up arguing in the middle of the woods, and he takes you to his castle once he accepts that the pain of his wound would be better cleaned by human methods. There are servants in his castle. You do not recall servants in many of your lives, but when they are there, they are a great comfort. Here, they seem relieved just to have you in the castle, even if you do fight with your love. You do eventually reach common ground over books. He gives your more than you have ever had access to in any of your lives. You show him worlds that take him away from the pain of this one. You soon realise he does not remember his past lives. Perhaps that is for the best. An eternity of cursed existences, one after another, never ceasing except for one day with you, and then the cycle repeats itself? You know deep inside, that in his place you would rather forget too.
Months after you left the village, you choke up the courage to tell him you are married. It shames you to speak for long of the suitor's treachery, but you soon stop by the murderous rage in your love's eyes. When you speak of your marriage, you realise for the first time the power he has in this universe. You can see that if he was human, he would not rest until the suitor answered for his crimes. But there is a misunderstanding between you. You do not know what it is exactly. All you know is that he send you to your village, to make amends with your husband. You are too shocked to protest, and you are in the village square before you even realise the miscommunication. He thinks you love your husband, and are heart broken by his infidelity. You want to return as soon as you are away, but your husband finds you before you can leave. He takes you to the churchyard, where a fresh grave has been dug. The mourners, a group of your husband's cronies, are confused at your presence, but you do not care for them when you see the person in the coffin.
Your father, who you love with the fierceness usually divided between him and two sisters, is dead. He is thin, the clothes hanging off him like a scarecrow. His hair is long and bedraggled, dark shadows under his eyes, sores on his arm from you know not what 'treatment' he underwent at the asylum. You fall to the ground weeping, sobbing. He was not supposed to die. He was innocent, a bystander, secondary character to fall back on for support in times of need. And it is your fault for leaving to find your love. You had three months of happiness and hope for the curse to be broken, while he had three months of hell. Already delicate from his age, you knew in the back of your mind he would not live long in the asylum. You just hoped he would live long enough for your love to set him free. But he did not, and now your father is dead. Because of you.
Your husband is surprisingly gentle with you after your father's death. Perhaps his own conscience weighs on him. Perhaps he knows that your distaste for him could ripen into hatred, and he needs control over you. Or perhaps he isn't a monster. Just a terrible man. When you leave a month later, your wedding ring on the table beside his bed and none of your possessions moved, he doesn't chase after you. You find out later that he was out at his tavern and passed out from drinking. By the time anybody noticed he wasn't at home, he had died out in the cold, warmed by the spirits in his belly, but frozen by the falling snow that night.
You nearly freeze yourself, trying to find your love's castle. When you do find it again, it is nearly is disrepair. The servants you knew do not move. They seem to be inanimate. As you wander through, climbing steadily to his rooms, you wonder where your love is hiding. His chambers are appalling, broken pieces of furniture and fabric everywhere. A rose is in a bell jar by the window. You feel oddly satisfied. At last, the rose is this story has appeared. Only one petal is still attached to it, however. Your love is standing outside, despair in every attitude. When you touch his arm, he smiles, but not with his eyes. He thinks you are a dream. You tell him that you love him. He still does not believe you, and the forced smile drops from his lips. Panic begins to fill you. His despair reminds you of all the times in your history when he fell into despair after you left. You somehow know he has little time left. So for the first time in your story, you reach for his face, and pull it down so it is level with yours. You look into his eyes, his beautiful human eyes, and tell him you love him. And for the first time, you kiss him while he is still a Beast.
When you pull away, a bright burst of light blinds you. Your hands are still on his face, and you can feel it changing underneath your fingers. The fur recedes into his skin, and his hair loses the coarse quality it had in this world. His body becomes human as well, until he stands in front of you, the spell broken. The two of you can hear the servants moving around downstairs, and you are thankful none of them come to disturb you. You know you only have one night with him, and so instead of just remembering your past lives, you tell each other what happened in this one.
He tells you of the curse he was placed under when still a child, after the neglect of his parents. He is excited at the prospect of meeting them again, and you do not have the heart to tell him that tomorrow, you will be in a different universe. In return, you tell him of the truth behind your marriage, the death of your father, your fear when the servants did not respond. You spend half the night talking. The other half, you spend together. You are married that night.
The morning light hurts your eyes. You cannot bear the thought of another existence away from your love, and so you keep your eyes shut. The pain of the last few months throbs under your skin, present but not overwhelming. It's odd. Usually you can remember your past lives with perfect objectivity. But this morning you feel the pain of your father's death, the hatred you still feel for the suitor, and the love for your new husband. Somebody moves against you, and you open your eyes grudgingly.
It is your love from this cycle. Relief floods your being. Finally, an end has come to this tale. It is a tale older than time itself. You should know. You lived all of them.
A/N: This was typed out in about an hour, but it popped into my head and just had to be released. In order, the Beauty and the Beast retellings are:
Cupid and Psyche, the Ancient Greek version involving their gods and goddesses
East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a Norwegian version where the prince is a polar bear and Beauty has to save him from the troll princess. This was made into a novel, 'East' by Edith Pattou, which I highly recommend as it is absolutely a delight to read
The Leprince de Beaumont version.
Panna a Netvor, a Czech film version from 1978 which I haven't seen, but I have heard great things about it, so check that out too
Beauty and the Beast, the 1946 Jean Cocteau version.
And finally, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which I . . . ahem . . . altered a little.
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