PRINCESS BEAST (12 page)

Rune leaps to her feet, grinning a blue gummy grin, waving like mad. “Good day, oh, thank you for coming . . . I thought I was going to . . .” Rune breaks into uncontrollable glottal clicking.

“And you would have too Rune if I’d not come along” the mermaid queen says as she reigns the turtle to a stop. “I’ve brought you sustenance, oysters and seal milk.” She hands Rune an abalone shell heaped with oysters and a bucket brimming with milk. Greedily Rune gulps down the milk, wipes her lips and thanks the queen. She pops a whole oyster into her mouth and encounters a sneer of distaste spread the queens’ upper lip. “Are you thick? Pry them open and slide them down your gullet.”

Rune is thinking that
throat
would be more dignified than
gullet
, but she does not speak, rather she eats with gusto. Halfway through, she pauses to ask the queen, “How do you know my name?”

“How could I forget your name!” she snaps. “This morning a huge red octopus appeared in my chamber. A small brown octopus accompanied her on a leash. She told me that I needed to rescue Rune and take her to Copenhagen. Then she slid eight tentacles around me and squeezed, not too gently either. She claimed my grand daughters had untied your boat and brought you here in the dead of night.”

“Why did they do that? How did the octopus know me?” Rune gapes, half an oyster dribbling down her chin. The queen quickly moves her finger to her own mouth and dabs at the corner. Rune slurps up the oyster with her long thick tongue.

The old queen squints at Rune. “You must be important and powerful. You transformed my grand daughter back to her true mermaid form. In answer to your first question, my grand daughters brought you here because my youngest grand daughter wishes to remain among her people. As for the octopus, I have no idea; I had never seen her in the whole wide seas. When my guardian stingray stung her, she said
Bricklebrit
, and the small octopus spat three gold coins onto my bed. She emitted an inky cloud and the next thing I knew, I was riding this turtle to your boat. Climb up and sit behind me.”

“What is your name, your grand daughter’s name?” Rune asks as she pulls herself up onto the turtle’s back.

“We have none; we were not given names nor souls.”

“No names, no souls?” Rune scratches her head. “Everything has a soul, an essence uniquely their own. But tell me please, did she marry her prince?”

The queen waves her bony hand and snorts. “I am two hundred and ninety nine years old, names and souls are of no consequence or interest to me. We merpeople live three hundred years of joy and sorrow, love and loss, and at death we turn into foam. I know my life has been a grand adventure; I have never sat in a chair by a window reliving memories of my youth, my one love gone years ago. I have swam the seven seas and seen wonders you cannot imagine. I have had hundreds of lovers and dozens of children. When I die, I won’t be put in a black box, then buried in the ground, dirt surrounding me for eternity. I will turn to foam and become one with the Mother Sea.”

“When I die, “Rune murmurs, “I will be buried in the ground and become one with Mother Earth.”

The queen shudders and twitches her nose. “Pah, I hope you don’t think yourself smarter than me—humans—you stink of human.”

Rune smacks her forehead. “That’s what I have been telling everyone. I am really a princess and I’ve come here to transform so I can marry my true love, I did not transform your grand daughter, I . . .”

“Be quiet!” The queen shouts. “This turtle and I are old and move slowly. I will tell you my grand daughter’s tale as we make our way to the coast at Helsingor.  Perhaps you will learn something. I won’t go into the Sound,” she frowns and thrust her chin upward. “You can walk to Copenhagen from there in a day. I don’t care if that Octopus shows up and squeezes out what is left of my life. Queens do not enter the Sound.”

 

* * *

 

 

Chapter Eleven

Sea Witch

 

In the Deco Palace high atop Glass Mountain, Croesus the hound is crunking to
Soul Man
playing on the palace sound system. Elora the Enchantress, dressed in a Louis Vuitton Damier bathrobe, lights a clove cigarette and blows a smoke ring that settles about the dogs’ head. “Don’t forget that I can read your thoughts, fuzzy as they are. True, I said I would not set foot in Andersen Land, however, a lady, especially an enchantress, can change her mind.”

Croesus trots to her side and licks her foot. Elora hisses at him and begins pacing. “Rune is a home girl, a Grimm fairy tale beastie/princess. If I allowed her to die in Andersen Land, imagine the tale that would be fabricated. The Little Beast, too proud, too loud, too ugly, but with a beautiful voice, who tries to get confirmed, to be transformed to a princess.  She falls in the gutter, or in this case, the ocean, where some evil being enslaves her until she can earn a soul. Rune knows that animals have souls, rocks, rivers, trees, thunder, animals, plants, earth” . . . she throws her hands in the air and the volume ups three levels . . . “and music!”

 

* * *

“In our kingdom grow vivid red and deep blue trees on which fruits shine like gold and flowers are like flickering flames. Our castle stands on blue sand and fish swim in and out the windows. We gather what is lost in shipwrecks but we don’t disturb the bones,” the dowager queen begins.

“Excuse me,” Rune says. “Don’t you want to hear my story good and true?”

“You asked to learn about my grand daughter and the prince, did you not?  Time is short; I want to get you to land and get back to my grand daughter whom I have not seen in one hundred years. She liked nothing better than listening to my stories of the world above. Again and again she would beg to hear of ships, towns, humans and animals,” the queen said, her face softening with the memory. “She loved her grandmother more than anyone.”

Rune is squirming with questions, but one icy glance from the dowager queen as Rune inhales, makes her bite her bottom lip.

“The impatience of youth,” the old mermaid shakes her head and clucks her tongue. “She was impatient, could barely stay in her scales until her fourteenth birthday, the age all mermaids are allowed to swim to the surface. Each of her five older sisters swam to the surface, enjoying the adventure, but glad to come home to their father’s kingdom and never strayed again.

“The day she turned fourteen, I placed a wreath of white lilies around her hair, and I was joyous sending her off for at last her pleading would cease. As it happened, this day was also the birthday of a human prince, his sixteenth. There was celebration on a ship floating near where my grand daughter surfaced. There was music and dance, and once she set eyes on the prince, she was blind to everything else, including the good sense I had taught her since her birth.”

Rune remembers her first sight of Hans, his black button eyes, his pointed nose, the white mask of fur on his face, his white tipped spines; how she felt tingles along her spine whenever he touched her, and his strong human legs. Then she remembers his human face, although twisted with rage, it was the most handsome face she could have imagined.

“How she could desire a creature that wobbles about on two ugly sticks of pink flesh is beyond my comprehension.” The queen tucks her hair behind her ear and continues. “A storm from the north blew into the sea and the ship was snapped to bits. He should have died in the storm.”

“She saved him.” Rune sighs.

“She did—and it was her undoing.” The queen slaps her tail against the turtle’s shell and he veers left. “All night she held his head above the water, drifting where the currents would take them. In the morning, he had not awakened and she kissed him and stroked his hair. Soon enough, she spied land, and she laid him on the sand where a church stood nearby. ”

“Oh-oh,” Rune says.

“Well, that is the first sensible utterance I have heard from you,” the queen says, managing the first smile Rune has seen since meeting her. “She was caressing his face when a group of girls came out of the church. She swam out to some rocks and hid behind them to watch. One of the girls found the prince, bent over him, and he opened his eyes and smiled at her. He was carried into the church and my grand daughter swam home with a sorrowful heart.”

“How did she find him once more?” Rune asked.

“Sneaky sisters, gossip traveling through jellyfish,” the queen scowls. “She learned the location of his castle and spent night after night watching from behind the tall reeds, swooning over the human. She listened to his people speak of how kind and good was the prince. I should have guessed the extent of her obsession when she asked me how a mermaid might gain an immortal soul.”

“Everyone has . . .”

“PPPPssssttt,” the queen sputters, “she had been fed some nonsense about a heavenly paradise where human souls go after death.”

“Oh-oh, listen, Helga told me . . .”

“The Bog King’s daughter! And what happened to her? We have our tales in the water realm and everyone knows them. Did she see paradise; did it save her I ask you?” The queen is seething and her tail has taken on a radiant blush.

“No, damn it,” Rune shouts. She grinds her fangs and her hackles rise. The old queen glances over her shoulder and she giggles. “You’re a pip, Rune.”

“But to have a human soul . . .”

“Smart too, aren’t you? My grand daughter sought out the sea witch, at her house built from the bones of dead sailors.”

Rune shudders; she’s familiar with witches, for they as are numerous in the Grimm forest as fairies are in Andersen Land.

The queen shakes her head from side to side. “I can’t fault the witch, she prefers slime and mud, eels and toads, but she is not a liar; she speaks the truth, ugly as it may be. She knew why my grand daughter came to the lair.
Your wish is stupid
, said she,
and it will bring you misery. You want to be rid of your tail and instead have two stumps as humans have, so that the prince will fall in love with you. You think you will gain both him and an immortal soul
.”

“Did she—did she gain the love of the prince,” Rune asks, leaning forward.

“You’re breathing on me,” the queen snaps. “Maybe you are not so smart, maybe you don’t deserve to learn of my grand daughter’s transformation.”

Rune taps the queen’s shoulder, and when she turns to look, Rune presses her lips together and turns an imaginary key in front of her mouth.

“The witch mixed up a potion and told my grand daughter to drink it the next morning before sunrise while sitting on a beach. She told her,
Your legs will divide and shrink until it becomes what humans call pretty legs. You will be in pain; it will feel is as a sword is piercing you. All that see you will say you are the most beautiful human child they have ever seen. You will walk more gracefully than a ballerina, but each time your foot touches the ground, it will feel as if you are walking on sharp knives. If you are willing to suffer all this, then I can help you.
And my grand daughter whispered,
I will
.”

Rune bites down on her bottom lip in order to keep quiet. She nearly bites through when the old queen screeches, “
But remember that once you have a human body you can never become a mermaid again
,” the witch warned her.
If you can’t make the prince fall so much in love with you that he forgets both his father and mother, because his every thought concerns only you, and he orders the priest to take his right hand and place it in yours, so that you become man and wife—if you cannot do this then the first morning after he has married another your heart will break and you will become foam on the ocean.”

The queen turns once more to look at Rune, “Yes, I wager her face was as frozen as yours at this moment, but she still said,
I must try
. However, the witch required payment and it would be as dear a cost as she could imagine. My grand daughter had the most beautiful voice of all who dwell in the seas
. I suppose you thought to charm your prince with that voice, but you must give it to me
.”

Rune slaps her right hand over her mouth.

“”If you take my voice, my grand daughter said, what will I have left? The witch replied,
Your graceful walk and lovely eyes; speak with them and you will be able to capture a human heart. Have you lost your courage? Stick out your little tongue and let me cut if off in payment and you shall have the potion
.”

Rune slaps her left hand on top of her right hand over her mouth.

“My grand daughter whispered,
Let it happen
. And it did, the witch cut out her tongue, and gave her the potion, then she was mute.  Would you do that, young Rune? Would you have your tongue cut out for your prince?” The dowager queen turns her head slowly and looks at Rune with a level gaze. Rune removes her hands and whispers, “No.”

 

* * *

 

“There’s hope yet,” Beauty says and sets the mirror on the frost-stiff grass of the trail she and Holger have been running along all through the night and into the day. They passed Odense, and in a few hours will reach Nyborg if all goes well. “Rune has always had a delicate nature when it comes to pain; she takes after me in that respect.”

Beauty sits on the grass and looks about; the trees are bare, the sky is steel grey and the North wind whistles through the treetops. She hangs her head and silent tears roll down her cheeks. “Can we possibly catch up with her now?” Beauty asks and lifts her chin, but Holger is not there.

“Holger?” she cries.

Holger appears moments later, his hands cupped before him, walking as if he is carrying a fallen baby sparrow. He kneels before Beauty and presents her with a great pile of rose hips. “For you,” he says, “eat them from my hands so you won’t lose a one. They will renew your spirit and strength.”

Before eating, Beauty asks again, “Can we catch her?”

“Helsingor is my home,” Holger replies. “I know every road and hill and stream between here and there. Rune does not. We shall try.”

Beauty lowers her huge head into Holger’s huge hands and carefully, gratefully eats the rose hips, not missing a one. Then she licks his hands clean of juice. And she does feel much better. She stands and places her hairy hand on Holger’s cheek, and says a heartfelt thank you. “We can go, if you are ready.”

Holger cannot stand. “You are the most spirited and strong woman I have ever known,” he rasps. “I cannot go now, my third oar is out of the water.”

Beauty shifts her eyes to the lower section of Holger’s tunic and sees that his erection is of Beast-worthy proportion. Something Beauty thought long lost revives and races through her blood; memories of herself and the Beast, rolling and growling like two badgers on a moss bed. The urge to mate is strong, but the urge to find her daughter is stronger. She turns her back and says just that. She considers what Holger could do: try to wrestle her to the ground and rape her, hit her over the head with a branch and rape her, run her through with is sword and rape her, or leave her where she stands to continue alone. Turning your back to an opponent is the greatest offering of trust a warrior can offer and receive. Beauty hears Holger rise, then shout, “On to Copenhagen!”

 

* * *