"Back again?"
Esther Drummond just shrugged and smiled at the owner of the local bookshop as she came through his door. "I can't help it, I get through them too quickly."
"Well, what will it be this time?"
Her fingers trailed across the spines of the books nearest to her. "Can I take a fiction one this time? The histories might be my favourite, but sometimes you just need a good story."
"What about this one?" The cheerful old man scoured over the shelves briefly before pulling out one with a blue cover and a fanciful title. "Adventures, far off places, magic, a prince...and there's a brilliant love story too."
She considered it before smiling. "Adventures and magic? I guess I could try it. I do like a good love story." She took the book and thanked him several times. "I'll bring it back when I finish it, so probably tomorrow or the day after."
"Alright then, Esther. Have a good day."
"You too!"
She left the shop and came back out onto the street. Her sister was back at the cottage with her children so she had to get back home quickly. As an avid inventor, her sister tended to nearly blow up their cottage if she was left alone too long. And since her husband died, she tended to get lost in her work for hours on end and occasionally forget about her children.
Unfortunately, Esther found her way blocked by none other than Gaston, the village brute. Or at least, that's how she tended to think of him. To most others, he was the village hero and most eligible bachelor. She, however, couldn't be less interested. She knew that he was old-fashioned in the worst way, and was utterly superficial and not by any measure a good person.
"Hello Esther."
It was all she could do not to sigh. "Hello Gaston." His eyes narrowed in on the book in her hands and he immediately snatched it only to eye it sceptically. "Gaston, can I please have my book back?"
"How can you read this? There's no pictures!"
Impatiently, she said, "That's the point. Some of us have imaginations, which are much better."
"Esther, it's time you got your head out of the clouds and started paying attention to more important things," he told her, tossing her book onto the cobbled ground. She scrambled to pick it up and didn't bother to hold back her glare. "Like me. So much of the town is talking about it. It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas, and thinking…"
"Well, we wouldn't want that," Esther said sarcastically, but he looked pleased, not taking her meaning.
"Exactly. Now, what do you say we take a walk over to the tavern and look at my trophies?" He tried to put his arm around her and lead her in the tavern's direction, but she shrugged him off.
"No, thank you. I have to get home to my family. If you'll excuse me." She turned and walked away, but not before she heard Gaston's friend Lefou's words.
"Well, someone has to look after those little girls, her crackpot sister never will!"
Esther spun on her heel. "Don't you dare talk about my sister like that!" Gaston muttered something in agreement and punched his friend, but she just resumed walking in the opposite direction. There were times when her small provincial life got to her in the worst way and made her desperate for something more.
"Sarah? Are you there?" Esther called when she go home. When she got no reply, she popped around the side of the house to the opening to the basement, where her sister was working away on a ridiculous but marvellous contraption. "Have you eaten today?"
Sarah barely acknowledged her presence. "I will soon."
Esther sighed heavily but knew she would get nothing more from her. Instead, she headed inside to find her nieces Alice and Melanie playing on the floor with their dolls.
"Aunt Esther!" Alice chirped, her eyes lighting up. "Can we have lunch now?"
"Of course," Esther said, "Give me ten minutes to make it."
A few days later, Sarah had completed her firewood chopping machine and had packed it onto the cart with Esther's help. For all her eccentricities and lack of good mothering skills, Sarah truly was a talented inventor and in her sister's opinion a complete genius.
"And you're sure that you're okay looking after them?" Sarah asked for the tenth time.
It was both endearing and annoying to Esther that she kept asking, because she was the one who looked after them almost all of the time anyway.
"Yes, now go and win that prize, you deserve it!" Esther told her, watching her give their horse Phillipe a nudge with her heels and start riding off towards the forest.
All she could do was hope that winning a prize would break her sister from her daze and make her pay attention to her children again. Esther didn't want to have to hang around forever, no matter how much she loved her nieces.
How could she be content here when there was a whole world of new things to explore?
Sarah Wilson nee Drummond came to a halt when the path in front of her split into two. One fork looked significantly more welcoming, but the direction of the other one suggested a shortcut.
"Come on, Phillipe, shortcut," she told the horse. He didn't seem too happy about it, but he could hardly argue.
The path was fine at first, but the forest was cold and the wind howled in her ears. That sort of nonsense didn't bother her, however, and so she pressed on. But soon it wasn't just the wind that was howling. If she was right…there were wolves around her.
"Faster, Phillipe!" She urged the horse forward and he began to gallop, just as spooked as she was. But then the wolves began to emerge from the tree line. They leapt at her and Phillipe, and knocked over the cart. Free of it, she was able to urge Phillipe to run faster – but the wolves were just as fast. They snapped at her heels and Phillipe's legs until she was sure that they were both doomed.
But then she looked up and saw a gate. She pushed Phillipe harder and they burst through the it. She leapt off the horse and managed to slam the iron bars back shut before the wolves could follow. With a sigh of relief, she turned around, only to freeze with shock.
A huge, magnificent castle lay in front of her. Towers and a drawbridge and imposing dark stone all over, all the things one read about in books and never believed. Even with the dark night and cold seeping into her skin, and the shadows lurking all around her, the only thing that Sarah could think was how frightening the place looked to be.
But that was when it began to pour down with rain. With no other choice, she ran to the door and knocked, hard. There was no answer. When she tried the door, it swung open and she hesitantly stepped inside.
"Hello?" She called out. "Is anyone there?"
"Hey, look, it's a person! A real person!" A small, excited voice exclaimed from nearby. She whipped around, only to see a table with a lit candlestick and a small clock.
"Who was that? Who just spoke?"
"That would be us," a different voice said. She frowned and grabbed the candlestick in hopes of pushing back the shadows nearby and revealing the speakers. "No, here."
She looked down at the candlestick to see it waving at her. When she peered closer, she saw that it actually had a tiny face, with glinting eyes that were just a little too vibrant. She nearby dropped it in surprise.
"Oh my god," she said, "How do you work?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," the candlestick replied, in a voice that sounded almost flirtatious.
"Ignore Jack, he has no boundaries," the clock said, sounding exasperated, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, it also had a face. "Please, stay. We can look after you, make sure you don't catch your death out there."
"Thank you." It was all she could muster, because as an inventor, the talking objects were fascinating, not only in how they worked but in the fact that they seemed to have personalities as well as rational thought.
"Follow us." The clock hopped off the table and bounded off down the hallway, and so still holding the candlestick that may or may not have been called Jack, she followed. They eventually came to a small, cosy room with a large, inviting chair in front of the fireplace.
"Hang on, Doc, are you sure that she should be in here?" The candlestick asked the clock, who just nodded.
"This is the best room for her to warm up in." The clock gestured with little wooden arms for her to sit in the chair. "Go on, sit down, relax, we'll look after you."
That was when a cart with a teapot and a teacup flew in. "Heard we had a visitor!" The teapot exclaimed, and Sarah realised that she should probably stop being surprised. "What's your name, then?"
"Sarah," the woman replied, and the teapot laughed – which was odd in itself.
"What a coincidence! I'm Sarah Jane, but everyone calls me Miss Smith, and this is my son Luke." The teacup next to her smiled as his mother filled him with tea. Sarah took Luke carefully by the handle and drank the tea slowly. It warmed her insides and she felt immediately much better than before.
"I'm not sure that she should be sitting in the chair," Jack the candlestick said somewhat nervously.
But it was too late by that point. A few seconds after he spoke, the door flew open with a bang and Sarah jumped up from the chair as she hastily put Luke back on the cart next to Miss Smith.
"What are you doing in here?" A low, angry voice demanded. "How dare you come into my home and sit in my chair?! Harkness, was this your idea?" The candlestick shook his head.
"No, not exactly."
"Who are you? I'm sorry for intruding, but I got lost in the woods, and they invited me in…" Sarah said helplessly.
"Your mistake for listening. They shouldn't have," the voice answered.
That was when a figure stepped from the shadows of the doorway, and Sarah had to gasp.
The woman standing there was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen. Her hair was black and knotted, eyes unfathomably dark and full of rage. But she looked like the personification of death itself. Her limbs were so thin that it was a wonder she was able to stand, and her skin so white that she bore no small resemblance to a skeleton. Her face was gaunt with emphasised cheekbones and eye sockets, and all of it should have made her look fragile and weak. This was not the case.
Ill, and perhaps near death, yes. But weak? No. It was the opposite - somehow this woman exuded an aura of deadly power.
Her lips were set in a firm line. "You want to stay here? Very well, you may reside in my dungeons…until you die." Her hand reached out to grab Sarah's arm, her sharp nails digging into her skin. Sarah was dragged from the room and into the base of a tower. Up the stairs they went, up and up until she was thrown unceremoniously into a bare cell.
"Wait, you can't just leave me in here, I have children, they're waiting for me," Sarah protested, but the woman had already turned away.
"You should have thought of that before."
So the Beast figure in this is a (somewhat minor) OC from my Halfway Out of the Dark series of Doctor Who fics. In that, she's the doctor for the new Torchwood team (and in that verse, Esther survived Miracle Day). And anyone who has read the series could concur that the Beast role fits her temperament perfectly.
Though you'll have noticed I've not gone for the traditional Beast route. I wanted to explore a different way the curse might have affected the unkind royal it was cast around. (Plus then you don't get the mild bestiality connotations, lol.)