Mrs. Beast (4 page)

    
Blockhead grovels at Beauty's feet.
 
"Beg your pardon, Princess Beauty.
 
I thought you was somebody else.
 
Don't tell Prince Runyon.
 
He'll sack me sure and this is the only job I ever got, and Pa won’t take me in, he’ll kick my arse," Blockhead blubbers.

    
"Please, stop blubbering and saddle Vixen."

    
Blockhead scrambles to fetch the saddle.
 
"Where you going?"

    
On a quest for love,
Beauty thinks.
 
She then realizes she truly doesn't know where she's going, for she has no idea where Elora lives.
 
She takes the mirror from her portmanteau and holds it before her face.
 
 

     
"Magic mirror,  

       I’m in distress.

      
Show me the

      dwelling of Elora

      the Enchantress."

    
Cinching the saddle, Blockhead surreptitiously peers over Vixen's rump.
 
The mirror's surface reveals a palatial structure of white stucco and soaring windows.
 
It sits atop a mountain of glass, sleek and clear as ice.
 
Beauty's brow furrows with perplexity and the mirror turns black.
 
"Blockhead?"

    
He ducks and hides his face in Vixen's flank.

    
"Do you know the way to a glass mountain?"
 
Beauty asks, placing the mirror back into her portmanteau.

    
"Why, sure I do, Princess.
 
Sit yourself on this stool and I'll wipe the shit off your fine boots."
 
Blockhead buffs Beauty's boots with spit and shirtsleeve.
 
"First you go out the stable door. . .
 
"

    
Beauty sighs impatiently and rolls her eyes to the rafters.
 
Blockhead swipes the mirror and stuffs it into the straw.
 
"Turn left and keep going 'till you come to the south road.
 
Go right and stay on that road.
 
It's a straight ride to Glass Mountain, about, oh, I'd guess . . . two hours."

    
Beauty can barely contain her excitement. "Thank you, you dear boy," she gushes and kisses Blockhead's cheek, an innocent gesture of gratitude if bestowed by anyone other than a beauty.
 
The naked mole rat in Blockhead's trousers twitches.
 
He hustles the bag onto Vixen's back, hastily tying knots, and boosts Beauty into the saddle.

    
Outside the stable door, Beauty turns and waves.
 
"Good-bye, and thank you again."

    
Blockhead doesn't wave back; his sweaty hands remain clasped over the bump in his britches.

*
     
*
     
*

    
By equine standards, Vixen is a fairy tale beauty.
 
Unlike her human counterparts, she's praised for her high-strung spirit.
 
The other mares are not jealous, and stallions don't lust after her except during estrus.
 
She's not expected to be good, kind, modest, trusting and trustworthy.
 
Her single loyalty is to herself.
 
Which explains why, after traveling five miles down the south road, Vixen swings about and bolts for the barn.
 
Beauty yanks futilely on the reins.
 
Blockhead's hastily tied knots unravel and slingshot the portmanteau to the road where it bounces three times, scattering princess apparel fifty feet.
 
Freed of half her burden, the scent of stable oats quivering her nostrils, Vixen kicks up her heels and sends Beauty airborne.
 
Luckily, a bed of blue hyssop cushions her fall.
 
Although she's scraped, no bones are broken and she doesn't bleed, not even three drops.

    
Beauty bites her lip, not to hold back tears, but rather to determine her next course of action.
 
Fairy tale beauties seldom cry.
 
With their mothers dying in childbirth, abuse inflicted on them by siblings, formidable tasks they're expected to perform, and injuries from ever-present sharp objects, beauties are nearly cried dry by the time they reach young adulthood.
 
When a beauty does cry, she hides and cries alone because people are intolerant of beauty tears.
 
Why should she cry, others scorn; she has everything, she has it all.

    
Beauty decides to consult the magic mirror.
 
The mirror!
 
She leaps to her feet, imagining glass shards on the road and herself wandering aimlessly for seven luckless years.
 
After thirty minutes spent gathering her belongings and scouring the bushes, Beauty gives up the search.
 
She assumes the mirror was lost at some point during the ride. It doesn't occur to her that Blockhead might have filched the mirror.
 
Despite the years of deception and cruelty heaped upon them, fairy tale beauties remain hopefully naive. Beauty begins walking toward the palace slowly, her eyes scanning right and left for a flash of reflected sun.

*
     
*
     
*

    
Beauty has walked three of the five miles.
 
Sweat trickles down her forehead and gathers between her breasts, stinging the tattoo.
 
Her head hurts, her arms ache from the weight of the portmanteau, her legs burn with exertion, and her feet form six blisters inside her fine leather riding boots.

    
“I must find the mirror,” she murmurs,
 
“it is the most precious of my possessions, a gift from my dear Beast.” To help pass the time as she searches, Beauty recalls the morning he gave her the mirror. She had awakened on a pile of straw in the Beast’s castle after spending her first night away from her father’s home. She wandered through the enormous palace and stopped before a door marked BEAUTY’S ROOM. She turned the knob to find sunlight pouring through a large bay window, a fire dancing on the hearth, a brass bed covered in eyelet lace, roses of every hue in vases lining the window sill, and an entire wall of books shelved behind glass doors. She selected a leather-bound volume, opened the cover and read the words: YOUR WISH IS OUR COMMAND. YOU ARE QUEEN AND MISTRESS HERE.

    
Now Beauty repeats the phrase she spoke upon reading those words: “I wish only to see my poor father again and to know what he is doing at this very moment.” She remembers the Beast knocked on her door at that very moment, and how she squealed and trembled at the sight of him. He held the magic mirror in his great paw, extended toward her.

    
“You may see your father in this mirror, or whatever else you wish, only you must ask in rhyme,” the Beast had growled and slide the mirror across the floor to Beauty’s feet. It was heavy in her hands, exquisitely cut from rose tourmaline, its facets casing jittery rainbows on walls and ceiling. By the time she lifted her head, the Beast was already gone, lumbering down the hall, his breath chugging like bellows.

    
“I simply must find the mirror,” Beauty murmurs again, “but I’m so tired and hungry.”
 
Her stomach rumbles; she hasn’t had a bite since breakfast, which she’d chucked into the chamber pot hours earlier. Her spirit sags, she stops to rest and her resolve weakens as well. Life at the palace isn’t so bad: she imagines soaking in her claw-foot porcelain tub, Quiche Lorraine served on a silver tray brought to her feather bed, choosing a book from the shelves—books, her old friends full of gracious discourse.

    
“Friends,” she sighs, because fairy tales beauties do not have friends though long for them intensely. The Beast was the one true friend she had.
 
He always saddled her mount with special care and tightened the ropes with his canines.
 
He would accompany her on every ride through the countryside, bending to pick her bunches of wildflowers. If the Beast were here, he would carry her in his arms five miles and more, to the ends of the Earth if she asked.
 
Beauty springs to her feet and shouts, "I won't give up!"

*
     
*
     
*

    
"Atta girl," Elora hoots over her crystal ball.
 
She flicks her wrist and a swelling symphony of the Boston Philharmonic playing
Tara's Theme resounds
through the Deco Palace.
 
Croesus stands on his hind legs and dances a dramatic polonaise across the marble floor.

    
"Dang me, if Beauty didn't heft that portmanteau with the inspired strength of Scarlett O'Hara heaving the dead Yankee into the scuppernong arbor,"
 
Elora drawls.

    
"She's headed back to the stables where she'll discover that Blockhead filched the mirror . . . she'll require a different mount, one with more sense than a turnip . . ."

    
Elora snaps her fingers and the stable interior appears within the crystal ball.
 
"Hmm, there's a likely candidate."
 
She forms a fist over the ball, opens her hand and silver dust drifts into the crystal, settling on the long ears of Hermes the mule.
 
Her magic complete, Elora grasps a rose between her teeth and joins Croesus in the dance.

*
     
*
     
*

    
Twilight descends lilac and gauzy on the Royal Stable as Beauty limps up the bridal path.
 
Even from this distance, she can hear the raucous party inside the palace, and she's certain Runyon hasn't noticed her absence.
 
She slips inside the stable and sees Vixen chewing contentedly from her feed bag.
 
Blockhead sits on his straw pile, eating sliced apples and fromage, mumbling into the mirror.
 
Beauty observes secretly as his mumbles diminish to dreamy babble: "Jhoron.
 
Hor-on.
 
Vor-on.
 
Cor-on," and he drops off in a snore.

    
Rather than feeling miffed, Beauty is thinking,
How sweet, he loves Jhoron enough to steal the mirror, rack his brain for a rhyme
, when she's nudged from behind.
 
She turns to behold the bemused face of Hermes the mule, a beast of burden, as dependable as the soil he tills.
 
She scratches the flat span between his dark eyes and the mules give her a knowing wink.

    
"Do you know the way to Glass Mountain?" she asks.
 
Hermes nods his head.

    
Beauty eases off her boots and replaces them with a pair of Blockhead's sturdy work shoes.
 
They fit her feet with room to spare and don't chafe the blisters.
 
She crawls across the stable floor to where Blockhead dozes, and stuffs her pockets with apple and cheese.
 
Carefully she extracts the mirror from Blockhead's limp hand, tucks it into her bodice, and crawls back to Hermes.
  
She climbs onto his back, clicks her tongue, and Hermes plods for the door.
 
Blockhead tosses and moans, "Mor-on."

    
As she rides, Beauty hums
Claire de Lune
between bites of Gruyere and apple.
 
While the south road had been curved, narrow, and overgrown with vegetation, the west road is broad, flat, and clear.
 
Spring meadows stretch as far as the eye can see, but Beauty can't discern their vivid color because the sun has set, leaving a deep purple nimbus on the horizon.
 
Without the looming shadows of trees, night songs of birds, and the scurry of nocturnal feeders, Beauty and Hermes bob like a bottle in a dark, calm sea.