PRINCESS BEAST (16 page)

 

* * *

 

Beauty covers Holger’s mouth before he can speak. “Don’t say a word,” she whispers.

“I want to say . . .” Holger mumbles beneath Beauty hairy hand.

“No,” she interrupts quietly, “not a word until we are with Rune in Copenhagen. Promise me,” she asks and removes her hand.

“My heart is . . .”

Beauty slaps her paw over Holger’s mouth and shouts, “No.  My future, Rune’s future, depends on you not speaking a word until we are all three together in Copenhagen. Do you understand?”

Holger nods, opens his mouth and Beauty’s hand darts to his crotch and grasps his family jewels. “Do you understand,” she repeats, applying pressure.

Holger’s eyes roll back in his skull.

“When I say . .
. Bricklebrit
. . .that is the word I will use to cue you that you may speak,” Beauty says, releases her grip and kisses him on the lips.  And they run west towards Copenhagen.

 

* * *

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen

 

“Magic Mirror within my hand

show me where in Andersen Land

my daughter Rune at this moment rests

so I can guess when we both may end this quest.”

The mirror shows Rune trudging along a dirt road in darkness. Farmhouses dot the road on either side, but no lights shine from within at this hour. The blanket is slung over her shoulder and inside the shoes dance, as dance they must.

Beauty and Holger are standing on a cliff overlooking the city. He touches her shoulder and Beauty says, “It’s your turn to sleep. Please do; I have much to consider in these few hours before dawn.”

Holger sits on the ground, leans back against a large stone, and in moments, Beauty hears sleep whistling through his beard. She sits on the cliff’s edge and takes in the panorama of Copenhagen, from the hundreds of ships anchored in the harbor to the rows of brick and stone buildings lining the harbor, their lights reflected in the water. Snow is falling now in fat wet flakes that cling to the city’s trees reminding Beauty of a snow globe the Beast gave her long ago, a miniature city contained within. The souls of her feet suddenly ache from the vast open space and distance before her. She shuts her eyes and indulges in picturing Cozy Cave: the moss covered entrance, the main room, with carved stump chairs, sanded and worn smooth with use, the bookshelves holding her treasured library, a fire glowing from the kitchen stove, her pots and pans hanging from the roof, her bedroom cove, the large sturdy homely bed. She wishes to be there tonight listening to the snores of her daughter in the next cove.

Beauty opens her eyes and blinks.
That wish is not possible
. Tomorrow she will see Rune, will embrace her; her heart slows for three beats then quickens.
What if she does not want me to touch her? What if she believes I am not truly her mother? How could she! All my life I longed for the mother who died giving me life, and have I not given Rune a mother’s love every moment of her fourteen years?

Beauty lifts her chin and sniffs the air.
It’s this place
, she thinks.
This land smells of death, death of pride and of wild joy, death of expression, death of carefree love, and death of body and spirit for young maidens. My Rune is full to bursting with all these traits. Oh, and determination, which is the only pig-headed reason I can fathom for staying here after meeting the transformed maidens of this land. Imagine pleading with an executioner to cut off your own feet? There is but one thing in the world I would have my feet chopped off for, and that one thing is Rune. But Karen, a girl of fourteen enslaved in those red shoes, enslaved by an evil spell concocted for the sole purpose of punishing young girls for their natural desire of pretty things.

Beauty mind jumps to the sight of Snow White’s evil stepmother dancing outside the cottage window in red-hot iron shoes, still dancing, still alive, still scaring the shit out of Snow after twenty odd years. Perhaps the bones can convince Rune to release the shoes.
Those bones in the killer’s cottage saved my life . . . that was just before I met Rapunzel. If the bones don’t convince her, I pray she doesn’t put those damned shoes on her feet before I get hold of her.

 

* * *

 

Rune pauses to fill her mouth with snowflakes to quench her thirst. The shoes take this opportunity to move sensuously over Rune’s back in a Japanese foot massage dance.  Rune groans with pleasure, her shoulders sag and the shoes begin a rapid kicking that nearly causes Rune to drop the bundle. “Let us free, set us free,” the bones shout. “These shoes will be the death of you.”

“Piffall and nonsense,” Rune snorts.

“Have not you learned anything from Karen’s sorrowful tale?” the shoes implore.

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Rune says, tossing the bundle over her shoulder and resuming her trot toward Copenhagen. “I learned that Karen was not resourceful, nor smart, nor strong, neither physically nor emotionally.”

“Liar, liar. I am Karen’s foot bones, and you, beast, are not fit to kiss the hem of her heavenly gown,” shout the bones.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me. At least I have bones to break, lips to kiss, and feet to walk upon—does Karen?”

“She is in . . .”

“Yeah, yeah, paradise with the angels—whoopee. Karen was a rare beauty, was she not?” Rune asks.

“Most rare.”

“She could have used that beauty as a resource to charm the invalid soldier that had cast a spell on the shoes and have him remove the spell. She would have been smart to use her beauty to her advantage, and if that didn’t work, she could have put him in a headlock until he agreed, or kicked his legs with the dancing shoes—she could have had him howling for mercy.”

“You are common pak!”

“Sticks and stones,” Rune giggles.

 

* * *

 

Beauty tucks her feet beneath her and gazes at the harbor.
Mermaids--I wish I could have seen them with my own eyes rather than in the mirror
, she thinks.
I hope she is down there with her family and she lives to be 400. The prince she loved will be in the grave at sixty if he is fortunate
. Beauty shakes her shaggy head and murmurs, “Love at first sight.”
A fairy tale
, she thinks
, romantic candy created by romantic poets, a candy young girls eat up greedily
. She turns and looks at Holger sleeping among the rocks.
If he loves me it is not due to love at first sight,
she thinks with a fond grin
.
But her smile fades, and she sighs
. I don’t love him. I loved the Beast, but I didn’t know the true meaning of love until I became a mother.

 

* * *

 

“You will fall in the gutter, unless you put these shoes on your feet and then you’ll be dragged from gutter to gutter,” the bones speak.

“Listen know it all,” Rune snaps, “Have you forgotten that I am a princess? Once I’m confirmed, I’ll transform into my true self, and then return to Grimm Land as fast as the wind and marry my prince.” I won’t stick around here to be bullied by angels or seduced by holy men, to be turned into a ray of light or sea foam or a daughter of the air, forced to earn my way into paradise. That mermaid could have had her prince a dozen times over.”

“Name one.”

“After the shipwreck, after she swam holding his head up all night, then laid him on the beach, she could have stayed with him until he woke, rather than hiding at the first site of girls coming from the church. Again, not strong, not smart, and not resourceful.”

“She wasn’t human.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Rune replies, jutting up her chin. “He had already fallen in love with her, with the maiden that saved his life. All she had to do was wait until he regained consciousness instead of letting a princess steal that love right out from under her nose.”

Rune cannot help but reliving the scene at Vagary Vale when Greta showed up in her carriage and Hans removed his hedgehog skin and she curled around him like a snake and he kissed her . . .

“Don’t say another word about the stupid mermaid,” Rune growls. “I’ve got to get to Copenhagen and be home before Christmas.

 

* * *

 

Snow falls on Copenhagen and Beauty paces the cliff above the city.
A mother’s love is unconditional love; from the moment of the first flutter beneath the ribs . . . your hand returning and returning to caress the growing belly, reassuring, loving. No, I never knew the true depths of love until Rune was born
, Beauty thinks. She looks to the north, the direction by which Rune will arrive in Copenhagen. Finding a horizon blank, but for snow, trees, and water, she sits once more, and once more addresses her mirror.

"Magic mirror, on this snowy night,

Please show me my daughter, and if she’s all right."

Within the mirror, Beauty sees Rune walking down a road, the shoes slung in the bundle on her back.
Don’t say another word about the stupid mermaid. I’ve got to get to Copenhagen and be home before Christmas
, she hears Rune say. Beauty knows that tone of voice, it’s the one Rune has lately used to be snotty to her mother.

“Fine,” the bones say. “Let’s talk about Helga; surely for the love of God you learned a lesson from her. If you truly are a princess, then you realize you both have struggled with dual natures of beast and beauty. Helga conquered her beastly nature through embracing . . . “

“Don’t you dare compare me to Helga”, Rune sobs and twirls the bundle around and around as if to throw it far into the forest, but she finds her hand will not release the ruby red shoes.

“Perhaps your mother was a beautiful princess and her sisters abandoned her with a beast,” the bones wheedle. “Perhaps the woman who has raised you is a sister of the beast, and kidnapped you because the beast wanted to eat you.”

Rune stops, her hackles rise from her hairy toes to her hairy head. She whips the bundle around in front of her, cradles it in her hands, and then bites down with all her might. “My—mother—does—not—lie!” She shouts between bites and tears and she doesn’t stop until the red shoes are bits of brilliant fabric carried far and wide by the howling North Wind.

 

* * *

 

“High five me, hound!” Elora hoots.

 

* * *

 

Upon seeing Rune rip the red shoes to pieces, Beauty jumps and clicks her heels, together, a tremendously difficult feat for a beast, which clearly shows her level of relief. If Rune had been so foolhardy as to don those shoes, well, it’s simply one less worry. She looks again into the mirror and finds Rune sitting on the snowy ground, shrieking and crying. How Beauty wishes she could run to her as she did the night this all began in Vagary Vale. She wouldn’t even care if Rune bit her again, as long as she could cuddle her. “My baby,” she says, running a talon along the mirror’s surface, “my girl who shouted that her mother does not lie.”

But I did lie, by omission
, Beauty thinks, and hangs her boulderish head. “Why didn’t I tell her the truth?”

The Andersen Land philosopher alights on Beauty’s shoulder. “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” he says.

Beauty lifts a hand level with her shoulder and the parrot steps onto it.

“Do you mean to suggest I should imagine what Rune’s life would have been like if I had told her the truth? Don’t you think I had done so hundreds of times? Beauty asks.

“That would be pointless,” the bird says, “One cannot change the past. Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.”

“Are you saying then that I need to understand why I didn’t tell the truth?” Beauty says, bringing the parrot to chin level. “I know why I did not tell Rune the truth about my past, about her birth—to protect her.”  

The parrot cocks his head, rolling one yellow eye over Beauty’s face. “From what?”

“From my husband, Prince Runyon, who wished to murder me,” Beauty replies.

“Marriage brings one into fatal connection with custom and tradition, and traditions and customs are like the wind and weather, altogether incalculable,” the parrot says, shaking snow from his feathers.

“You’re right, Runyon was not my principal fear. I was afraid Rune would be a fairy tale beauty, and after meeting the beauties of Grimm Land, the devastation, cruelty, and heartbreak they were forced to endure because of their beauty—that I was forced to endure, I chose to become the embodiment of my beloved Beast, and our child would be living proof, a daily reminder of that love.”

“It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite. Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself,” the parrot squawks with authority.

Beauty stares long, gaped jaw, at the philosopher. “Damn . . . damn, you are profound.”

 

* * *

 

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Elora snorts over her crystal ball. “That’s the magic trick of philosophy, hound. Spout out something broad enough to encompass nearly any head-scratcher a floundering, seeker of the truth may have, and the statement makes sense.”

Elora checks her Patek Phillipe wristwatch. “Three hours until high noon. Sufficient time for me to stir up the pot and I’ll need my hip waders.” Elora peers into the ball and sees Beauty address the magic mirror. “Perfect, Beauty is watching. Come on, Croesus, we’re going to Andersen Land.”

 

* * *

 

“Magic mirror, through this storm,

Show me if Rune is safe and warm.”

The parrot leans to the glass, tapping his beak on the surface. Rune is walking alongside a stream, and although the sun rose a few hours ago, light barely breaks through the blinding snow. Rune shields her eyes and turns her head at the sound of a shout from the stream.

“Hey, kid—gimme a hand, will ya?”