Author's note: Second chapter, in which we are introduced to the other protagonist of this story. To those of you who may be wondering – yes, the fairy tales featured in this story are quite warped and oddly put-together in a very many different ways, but some of their aspects have remained true to the originals. Beauty's new stepmother and stepsister's unkindness to her have not been featured because I wanted to keep with the traditional "stepfamily-bad, heroine-good" theme, but because it tied the Cinderella story into the others. There will be things that you will find the same, and some will be different. Trust me – it's all part of the plan. ^_^
Oh, and this is also a bit of a long chapter – I tend to do that a lot with my stories, so please bear with me and my faults…
Disclaimer: As usual, I do not own Beauty and the Beast or any of the other fairy tales featured in this story. I merely write of them for other people's enjoyment (hopefully…)
Beast:
Past Understanding
A frightful Beast…
My story begins three hundred years ago.
Once, then, I had had a family, a world that I knew and loved, a home, a purpose in life, and all of the happiness that could be imagined.
I was the second oldest child in my family and my parents were members of the White Realm, also known as the world of faeries, which hovered on the fringes of the mortal world of men. Faeries are powerful, incredible beings that look exactly like humans – mortals – except that they are all incredibly fair and hardly age, and are gifted with two things. First, they have an ability to create and wield any kind of magic or enchantment that they wish, and second, they have the chance to become immortal.
Actually, to tell the strict truth, I was only half-faery.
My mother, the younger sister of Vahlada: the lady of the White Realm, was faery: a member of the exalted, perilously fair race. My father, however, was a mortal: only allowed into the world of faeries because of my aunt's unswerving love and devotion for my mother. In spite of this obvious privilege, however, he was barely present in our family, being forever off somewhere on one of his 'once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity' fortune-hunting chases.
But that mattered little to me. I enjoyed my life.
I had an older brother with whom I got along very well, a kind and caring mother who understood everything about me, two younger twin sisters who were never irritating, and a fantastic rank in the court of the White Realm. I was a powerful enchanter, my immortality was something I had almost earned, and one day, when my mother became queen of her father's mortal world kingdom, my brother and I would be princes, and my sisters would be princesses. And I would no longer have to worry about what kind of chicanery my father was getting into because I would have better things to do. My life was simply, and without a doubt, perfect.
Perfection, I have found since then, is something that remains in one's life only so long as one is unaware of it.
I was twenty-three, barely so, when I discovered that my father had struck a bargain, with some black-market sorcerer from the mortal world, to steal the legendary Book of Hours from the faery stronghold of Avalennon. The Book of Hours was a gigantic manuscript that held within its pages the stories of each hour of the day. It could be used to manipulate the natural course of day, making night into mid-afternoon or worse. Only the highest-ranking members of the court were allowed to use it or even touch it, so greatly was it held in reverence.
And my father had stolen it.
Of course, the royal guard had been called out upon someone's sighting of the thief, and they had chased my father to our home, and they were banging on our door almost before I had had time to realize what he had done. My father bolted. Throwing his cloak at me so that it landed squarely on my head and then tossing the book into my arms, he ran from the room and disappeared. The royal guard burst into the room and saw me there – looking like an apparent thief.
Then things went from bad to worse. The official who had been sent to capture the thief was a wizard who had been in the mortal world for many years and he had never seen my father before. All he knew was that the figure that had stolen the Book of Hours had worn a dark blue cloak, and – obviously – had the volume with him. He was also very eager to punish the evildoer who had taken one of the White Realm's most guarded possessions. He wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to tell him that I hadn't taken the book. But why would he have listened to me? Don't all miscreants generally try to plead their way out of justice?
So the wizard – Saruptal – put a curse on me.
I left the White Realm, my beloved family, and the life that I had known, and fled to the mortal world. The curse changed me and I was terrified, uncertain, and alone, and I couldn't bear to let them see me. I couldn't bear to see myself.
And so I became a beast.
The Beast.
* * *
In the three centuries that I had been this way, I had learned to keep myself from any being's sight. Éindor was the country where the White Realm's capital, Avalennon, had its boundaries, and, whereas I wanted to be as far away from the condemning presence of my past, I couldn't bring myself to leave it entirely. With the aid of my enchanter's powers, I created a fortress in which I could hide away from everything and anything. I shunned anything that would show me what I now was, anything that would drive me mad with the reality of my curse…however, there was one place in the castle where a legion of mirrors lurked, simply waiting for me to stumble upon them, like a hidden torture chamber. Beyond that, the castle that I made still reflected the love, the passion, which I still had for beauty, and I could not escape it.
I maintained the services of the creatures that I had used in the White Realm as my most loyal servants – and they really were extremely loyal, for every one of them owed me its life in some way or another – to both assist me in ways that I knew little or nothing of, being slightly inexperienced at living in the mortal world. They were the Sprytes, and despite the comical sound of their name, no being could be further from that. Wise as a unicorn, sly as a fox, and witty as a thousand well-trained scholars, they were quite the most able servants that I could have wished for. They tended to the vast gardens that surrounded my castle, kept things clean and beautiful within its rooms, did my bidding, and made certain that the castle was lit and fires were kept going whenever they were needed. As to what they look like…it's somewhat hard to explain. Sometimes they resemble flecks of light, like miniature stars, and can dart about with the most amazing speed. More often than not, however, they change shape whenever the whim comes upon them – and far be it from anyone to even attempt to predict what their next form will be. I never tried.
What happened to me is almost obvious without need of words.
I felt as if I had been imprisoned in a shell, my hideous monster's form, although I kept my mind, my emotions, and every part of my former self except for my exterior. Now I could see in the dark, although my normal eyesight in broad daylight was a bit blurry, I could smell a thousand times more acutely than ever before, I could move about with near silence when I wished, could run for hours without becoming tired, and I could hear things that I previously had had no sense for. However, there were also some things that I wished I had never been subjected to – things that beasts did because it was their nature and they could not help themselves.
The curse's hold on me was impossible to free myself from. I chased creatures through the forests in the lands surrounding my castle, deep in the night as the moon shone above on the treetops and the owls cried their mournful, haunting song. I both intensely desired and hated the feeling of having killed my prey and drenched myself in dew and blood. I was faery, and I was beast. Even if I had spent the past three hundred years trying to teach myself how to behave like a man again and, more importantly, trying to find a way to break the curse, I was still a beast.
It was past understanding.
If it hadn't been for the Sprytes, with their odd companionship and even odder ways, and the roses, I might have lost my mind entirely. The roses. I had made roses – countless numbers of roses, in every shape, size, and hue – grow everywhere about in the castle gardens. Of course, there were thousands of other flowers, herbs, plants, trees, and bushes there, but it was the roses that I loved the most. They, above everything else, reminded me of the love, happiness, and peace of my former life. I was nearly obsessed with them, for I could not bring myself to care about anything else as deeply.
It would prove to be part of my destiny.
* * *
A palace…
I saw the merchant long before he ever saw me, and I smelled the scent of a human on the air far before he had ever appeared.
After three hundred years of perpetual silence and secrecy, it puzzled me that someone: a mortal, no less, should come upon my clandestine sanctuary. However, when I saw the man, I saw what had driven him so far away from the normal human settlements, causing him to become so lost that he had stumbled upon my castle. A blizzard had covered the land with a seemingly vengeful fury.
I watched from behind the shadowy windows as the man and his exhausted mount found the castle gates. A faint glow that ebbed into being at the direct vicinity of my elbow warned me that a Spryte, in the form of a tiny little winged human-shaped being, had materialized there.
"It looks cold outside." it remarked, and I could be only too certain of what it was implying. "Certainly." I retorted, snapping irritably at it. "It's the middle of the winter. Don't tell me you haven't become familiar with the climate of this blasted country in the three centuries that we've been here. I certainly have!"
I was about to turn my back and walk dismissively away, but the Spryte's next words halted me in my tracks.
"You could help him."
Well, that was true, and I knew it. Gritting my teeth together and clenching my paws into tight fists, I returned to my post at the window and glared at the glowing creature for a moment as it waited on me, complacently.
"Fine." I told it, not bothering to hide my irritation. Why was it that the Sprytes would go all save-the-world and humanitarian on me at the most inopportune times? I had been alone for three hundred years and now…
"Fine. Let him in, give him food and a place to sleep and whatever else you see fit and let him spend the night in…"
I trailed off, uncertain of where to put a guest after my long time alone.
"In one of the rooms here. And then, tomorrow morning, I want him gone. No questions, no answers, and especially no showing yourselves! It's the last thing I need to have someone raising a ruckus about a horrible monster that lives in the woods just waiting to pounce on the first unsuspecting traveler that happens by."
I glanced at the Spryte, expecting to see that it had already gone.
"Are you still here? Go!"
It did, and I was left alone again. I watched, then, as the gates slowly swung open and the man came inside. I could only imagine what he was thinking, but I really didn't care. He would stay the night and go on his way the next morning, having witnessed no appearance of the castle's inhabitants, and perhaps the story of a magical castle would circulate about in whatever town or city that he had come from for a while, and then we would be left to peace again.
He led his horse into the stables, and a little more than a half an hour later, I heard the great front doors open and knew that he had entered. I went to my own quarters, confident that the Sprytes would do their work without my aid.
But what would this man think of my castle and all of its wonders, and its lack of living inhabitants? He would never really know about what really went on here, and I would never know what things had passed through his mind as he crossed over my thresh hold. But did I care? Or could I possibly not care?
Suddenly, an overwhelming sadness and longing for my family swept over me and tore viciously at my soul, and I fled into the cold, snowy night.
* * *
The next morning, I found that my visitor had awakened and was looking about the castle, presumably searching for either its master or its mistress. Keeping myself well hidden, I followed him outside and into the castle gardens, staying close behind him as he made his way towards the gates.
His horse made me nervous. It could smell me, although its owner could not, and it was behaving very skittishly, rolling its eyes so that their whites showed as it chomped on its bit, flecks of foam forming at the corners of its mouth while sweat appeared to glisten wetly at its sides. It was waiting for its first chance to bolt.
I growled, softly, deep in my throat, and forced myself to resist my carnivore's inclination to silence the stupid brute.
The man had come to a place in one of the gardens paths where a great profusion of pure, snow-white roses grew, hundreds of them, in spite of the cold weather that winter had cast so quickly upon the earth. He stopped. I myself grow icy.
He broke off a rose.
A wild, ragged shriek of insurmountable rage, despair, and madness burst forth from me. I tore out of the bushes in which I had been hiding myself, fangs bared and claws ready to rip into shreds whatever they came into contact with. The horse screamed in terror and reared, then whirled around and was gone. I hardly noticed, for my anger had overwhelmed me. I couldn't contain myself. I knew that he had meant no offense, but he had just taken one of my roses, my most precious possessions. He fell to the ground, cowering, arms flung about his head.
"YOU!" was all I could manage to say coherently.
He wouldn't even look at me. I tried to steady my breath.
"I saved…your life…" I finally rasped. "I let you into my castle and kept you from death…and you repay me…" I tried to take another calming breath, but my anger took over my mind again and I screamed, "With this!"
He had no idea what he had just done.
"My roses are what I love best in the world!"
I turned around, refusing to let him – to let this man, this mortal – see that another of my emotions had surfaced: grief.
"And you steal them. For this," I whirled around and stabbed a finger, or rather a claw, at him. He had been staring, aghast, at the back of my head when I had been facing away from him, and then he raised his hands to cover his face again when he saw mine. I felt like shoving those hands away and forcing him to look into my eyes.
"For this," I repeated, trembling with rage, "You shall die!"
At last, he was looking at me.
"Please!" he said, and I saw the blatant, boundless terror in his eyes.
I knew such terror.
"Please, milord—"
I cut him off, even angrier.
"Do not call me a lord – you see what I am!"
"Please, I only did it for her! She asked me to bring her a single white rose. I thought I would have things to bring back to them, but I have failed. When I saw these roses, I believed that I could at least give my beauty what she truly wanted. Please, they are all I have. I beg of you, merely let me say good-bye to them."
My mind was whirling.
She.
He had said she.
But who was she? His wife? His daughter? Someone else entirely? A woman who loved roses…
I let the breath expel from my lungs, and it made a low hissing sound as it left my chest, and then I narrowed my eyes.
"Explain."
So he told me, never once meeting my eyes, of his loss of fortune – he had been a merchant in the country of Casilimoor – and of his family's forced removal to Éindor, of his second wife and stepdaughter. And his daughter. I asked her name.
Arielle Honorine Bellissima Rose.
Rose…Arielle…she…daughter…Beauty.
I then had a mad, mad idea and spoke it, almost without thinking.
The wizard had told me… "There is hardly any way to break this spell that I've put on you, but I'm feeling generous tonight. Therefore, I shall tell you this, and only this – you can't tell anyone of whom you truly are, or instant doom will be your reward, and there must be two people working against this spell in order to shatter its bonds upon you and transform you back to your former self. One of those people is you…and the other…well, there's only one person in the world that can be that other person, and you must find him – or her. But I don't think you'll be wanting to be out in the wide world searching for your rescuer anytime soon now, will you…" Derisive laughter.
I cleared that memory from my head.
"You say, merchant," I began, speaking slowly and clearly, making certain that he heard each and every one of the words that I had for him, "that you are all that your family has left. Go home to them then."
I saw hope begin to glimmer faintly in his eyes and cut it off relentlessly.
"But in three weeks, you will send your daughter, this Beauty: the one who asked for a rose, to this castle, where she will remain for the rest of her days – with me."
I savored the taste of those words on my lips. She. With me. The rest of her days. Only with me. Rose. This Beauty.
"She must come or you will return and receive your punishment."
I was being cruel and I enjoyed it.
The merchant's eyes widened and his skin paled – I was blind to all colours, like most other animals, but I could see that he had changed in hue – and I could smell his fear, his grief. His panic.
"No, please!" he cried, pleading with me. Animal inclinations rose again and I clenched my teeth, checking myself. "Do not ask this of me – I cannot sacrifice my daughter to pay for my own sin! Kill me now if you must!"
I shook my head. This was not something that I was going to give up.
"No." I snarled. "Return home and tell her of this. Tell her and in three weeks, either you or she must come here. Go!"
With that, I flung an arm out towards the gates, which swung open with the speed of lightning at my gesture and waited, quivering from the echoes that the sound of my last word, roared as only a Beast could, had thrown into the air. The merchant got to his feet, shaking, and backed away, staring at the ground and refusing to look at me.
"Return or suffer." I told him. "GET OUT!"
And he did.
* * *
Beauty's room…
I had made the merchant swear to bring either himself or his daughter…which meant that I had much work to have done before the three weeks had passed and they came. If they came.
One of the worse parts about my curse was that, on that terrible night three centuries ago, I had been frozen in time. Instead of merely being able to age and then expire – for I had not yet gained my faery immortality, as I have already stated – I had not aged a single moment, and death could only come to me by my own hand. The problem that this caused was that I had missed the changes of the world during those three hundred years and I now had no idea of how to provide a suitable living place for…her.
And that was another problem – her.
I hadn't asked her age. Horrors. What if she was a child and would cry for her family and lose herself within the castle's hundred rooms and halls? I could help with the latter of those two, and so could the Sprytes, but the first…
What if she was a young woman who was in love – or betrothed?
The thought of that made me feel deeply sick.
Either way, she would most likely hate me for what I had subjected her to, and her companionship would be a bitter one. I knew that she would be frightened of me. I was frightened of myself. But she was coming and I had to ready her place. She would be the castle's mistress and I would now have her completely to myself, as a payment for her father's treachery, forever.
I went to one of my rooms and began a special task of magic working. One of the windows in my rooms was a very special window, quite unlike any other in the entire castle. When given the proper command, it would show any picture of anything that I wished to see. It glimmered at me, half-invitingly, half-hesitantly, and I stared at it for a moment. Then, I said a few words in faery and the window's many coloured stained glass panes seemed to melt and fuse together with a burst of light.
When it cleared, I saw a picture of a room – hers. Quite obviously, from what I could tell by looking at it, she was a young maiden: a few years below twenty, I decided. I gave another command and saw a picture of a royal court. I felt a sense of mild surprise. So much had changed in the world, and yet so much hadn't.
This wouldn't be…terribly bad.
Satisfied, I went to work.
Three weeks.
* * * * * *
"The Beast's power is so great…"
Author's note: Well, there you have it. I must ask the forgiveness of those of you who like the sweet, soft-spoken Beasts; as you can tell, this guy is not quite a very nice person (yet), but you can't really blame him for being somewhat…erm…hostile to life in general. He'll have a character improvement later on, and you'll see that he's really not all that bad. Just for now, let's see him being a bit of a brat. Please r&r!