PRINCESS BEAST (7 page)

"I know, I know, there, there, it's all right." Rune reaches out and touches Helga hands.  Although blue sparks fly, Rune holds on. “I don’t blame you for being confused. Religion is confusing, and I have read about every religion there is; my mother has a huge library in our cave. In my opinion and mother’s, most religions are demanding and cruel. The Old Testament is full of murder in the name of their god. The things you did as a Viking girl aren’t so bad compared to Bible stories. Hey, I think tonight is Samhain, yes, it is. How do you celebrate it here?"

 

* * *

 

“You tell her, Sweet Pea,” Elora pauses over a huge copper cauldron on the Le Cornue stove in Palace Kitchen where she’s concocting a vat of Samhain Smash for tonight’s celebration. “Forget any festivities in Andersen Land, they don’t celebrate Samhain, All Hallows Eve, Halloween, whatever turns your crank, it won’t turn the Danish.”

She points the copper ladle at Croesus. “This is what the Lord said, Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. Or how about, the people of Samaria must bear their guilt because they have rebelled against their god; they will fall by the sword, their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant woman ripped open.”

Elora snaps up a pupperoni and tosses it to Croesus. “You can bet your long pointed ears that Yahweh won’t set foot in the Maimed Animal Zone, or all of Grimm Land for that matter. The Lord said to Moses, tell Aaron, for the generations to come, none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. No man who has any defect may come near; no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; no man with a crippled foot or hand, or who is hunchbacked or dwarfed or who has an eye defect or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. But God loves Andersen Land,” Elora shouts and throws back her head with laugher. Croesus catches the drops of Samhain Smash before they hit the floor.

 

* * *

 

“Samhain is a pagan holiday,” Helga frowns. “There are no pagans in Andersen Land.”

“There’s one now,” Rune mutters. “What religion did you choose?”

"A choice was made for me. At harvest, my grandfather arranged for me to be married, and soon a caravan arrived bearing my bridegroom, a prince of Arabia.  I was dressed in this fine linen gown and jeweled collar and wed to Prince Alli in the temple of Isis."

"Was he handsome?"  Rune giggles, hoping to brighten Helga's glazed expression.  And Helga does smile, a twisted grimace, as if she's touched a bad tooth with her tongue.

"Yes, but not as handsome as Michael.  Still, I accepted that this was the beginning of a new life. I could leave the past behind with no more doubts about who I was; I would be a wife, a mother, and a princess of Arabia.  Foolish girl, foolish girl!"  Helga moans and her aura becomes brighter.  Rune fur puffs out like a Persian cat's from Helga's increased voltage.

"I rose from the wedding feast and walked to the large window where the night sky was bright with sparkling stars.  A stork flew onto the balcony, and I stroked his feathers and thanked him for coming. From out of the darkness, a figure began to form and as it drew nearer, I could see that it was Michael.  After a year in Egypt, I had nearly forgotten his face; I could picture his hair or his eyes, his mouth, but it was hard to put them all together.  Instantly upon seeing him, the old flame of love flared inside me.  He said that the splendor, the glory of paradise is far greater than anything found on this earth.  And I pleaded as sweetly as I could to be allowed to look into paradise."

Helga's aura grows so bright that Rune scootches three feet backward.

"Michael lifted me up, held me in his arms, and this time, it did not burn.  He took me to a place, which cannot be described or imagined.  I felt transformed so that the splendor I saw before me was also within me.  I have never known such great happiness."

Rune is more bug-eyed than usual. 
What could be more romantic
, she thinks,
than the one you love coming back from the dead and lifting you into paradise?
At that moment, she wanted more than anything to be lifted in an embrace of Hans, the former hedgehog.

"Then Michael said we must return, but I begged for one more glance, one more moment in his company. He said we must return to earth because all the guests were leaving. One last glance, the very last, I said.  In a flash, I was back on balcony Michael was gone, and the great hall was empty.  I walked through the palace looking for Alli, my mother, my grandfather, but they were gone.  I went outside into the garden, and I saw the stork. I called to him, saying,
It's me, Helga, from the balcony last evening
.  The stork said I was mistaken, that I must have been dreaming.  I reminded him of the Viking hall near the great bog and how he had brought me the swan skin."

Rune is so upset, she wants to scream, and she grinds her three rows of fangs together in agitation.

"The stork said:
That is an old, old story.  It happened so long ago that my great-great-great grandmother was alive then.  It is true that such a princess once lived here in Egypt, but she disappeared on her wedding night and never returned.  You can read the story on the monument in the garden
.  Helga light is now so brilliant that Rune crosses her arms over her face.

"I understood; a moment in paradise is a century on earth.  The sun fell on me and just as the rays of the sun in time past had changed me from an ugly frog into a beautiful princess, so did they now change me into one single ray of light that shot upward, and where I had knelt lay a withered lotus flower."

"Did you join Michael?" Rune gasps her question.

"Someday, perhaps I will, when all my sins are forgiven, when I have suffered enough to be worthy."

The Andersen Land philosopher chooses this moment to fly over the girls squawking, "The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die."

Rune stands abruptly, her very fur quivering with incredulity. “One hundred years as a bolt of light isn’t enough! Bear poopin prat,” she hollers and rips out a lingonberry bush. She tosses it over her head, “what about love and happiness in life not in some cockamamie paradise?” She jumps up and down with agitation, shaking three tree fairies out of their nutshells.

“I’ll return when you have calmed yourself,” Helga says. “I will pray for you, that the Holy Spirit will come upon you. Then I can finish my story by telling you the rewards of a life dedicated to god the father.”

Rune stops her rant to watch Helga diminish to a spot of light among the bulrushes, and she makes a vow to avoid men of the cloth.

 

* * *

 

 

Chapter Seven

When The Bough Breaks

 

Croesus the hound turns away from the crystal ball and flops to the floor with a disgruntled growl.

"And your crybaby whiny-assed opinion would be?  Of course Helga got dissed--she was young, beautiful, a pagan and a virgin in Andersen Land.”  Elora raps her nails over the ball, "Yep, the priest lured her away from the happy life she might have had, and he knew--don't tell me he didn't know, how fast time passed in paradise and how much she wanted to stay with him. For the past few hundred years, the priest has dwelt in paradise while Helga's stuck in depressed adolescence as a damned night light in limbo.  Ah, now there's a slap-happy spot, all those unbaptized Christian souls weeping, wailing, gnashing teeth, while waiting for enough prayers and candles to boot them up to heaven."

Croesus rolls onto his back and whimpers.

"Hey, I did the max by bringing her to the bog, the rest is up to Helga.  She's the only one who can help herself and she's too depressed to figure it out.  If she had stayed true to her nature, she'd either be in a Valkyrie in Valhalla or a mummy in a tomb, her spirit visited by numerous great-great-great grandchildren. The moment that ghosty girl says,
I don't deserve this shit
, she'll be outta there."

Croesus hops to his feet and wags his tail.

"No, I will not tell you where.  If I gave away all my secrets then I wouldn't be the omnipotent enchantress I am, would I? Now let’s go swan hunting.”

 

* * *

 

Without the distraction of conversation, the sounds of the swamp grow sharp and clear:  the click clack of bog beetles, the slither of bog salamanders, the chitter of bog lemmings; sounds Rune has not heard in the forest, and to her dismay, the sun is beginning to go down over the bog lake.
No, I won’t stay and listen to one more infuriating word from Helga,
she thinks
, I need to get away from this blasted bog.
Rune takes off in a trot, her knowledge of the seasons and skies guiding her at last to a forest in Frederica. She considers traveling through the night; beasts can see quite well in the dark.  However the possibility of stepping into a sinkhole or coming upon an animal of greater size and strength, makes her reconsider Helga’s warning,
A girl unafraid in this land is doomed
. She looks about for a tall strong tree and settles on a black oak.  Halfway up, she can see across the Little Belt to the Island of Fyn, and she wedges her square hairy body in the fork of two branches.

Under normal circumstances, Rune would make up a song to ease her worries, but tonight, she doesn't feel much like singing.  She's thinking about Helga and her priest, and even though she is an exceptionally bright beastie, she still has the emotions of a fourteen year old, which rarely view love with logic, especially after a long day of travel.

"They will be together some day soon, just as Hans and I will be together by Christmas. The prince and his princess," Rune whispers wistfully and closes her eyes.

"What are you about?  Slumber Land?  In my oak tree? Well, well, well now, it is known throughout this land to be true that a real princess could never sleep in a tree,” says the Fairy of Pedigrees, looking down her long nose from an acorn bed.  “A real princess cannot sleep on twenty mattresses topped with twenty eiderdown quilts if there be even a pea at the bottom, that's how delicate a true princess be.  Are you listening?"

The fairy is answered by Rune's rumbling snore.  She bites her thumb and flies to the tip-top of the oak tree, acorn clenched between her delicate hands.

 

* * *

 

Beauty stops to read a large sign at the beginning of a road edged with stones: 

Welcome to Andersen Land. 

Please don't step on the flowers.

She lifts the mirror and sees that Rune is fast asleep in an oak tree. 
If only she would have stayed a day longer, I would have caught up with her
, she thinks.  Beauty believes that if she keeps running through the night, she may be able to find that same oak tree before dawn.  However, even a beast as determined and as powerful as Beauty cannot keep going on adrenaline and a few fish.  An hour passes and Beauty's legs feel as if they are rusted metal; her joints creak, and her lungs ache.  She kneels on the damp forest floor. 
A cat nap, just long enough to catch my breath
, she thinks.

 

* * *

 

"All right, all right, don't get your sphincter in a knot. Who do you think you are, Chef Ramsey?" Elora grumbles and turns a swan on a spit.  They are in the Deco Palace courtyard preparing for the night’s festivities. Elora has zapped jack-o-lanterns onto the heads of her statuary, gravestones throughout the vast lawns, and skeletons rattling from tree branches. She could have easily conjured roasted swans for the feast, but she enjoyed killing all six of them and she enjoys turning them slowly on the spits.  She snaps her fingers and the crystal ball appears within her cupped hands.

"Mother and daughter beasts are off in the land of Nod.  Just let me scan the peripheries to ensure all is copasetic." 

She checks the Frederica forest and finds all is well, then she switches to the snoozing Beauty and zooms outward.  "Whoa, and who might that lunachick be?" 

Within the ball, a woman walks holding a lantern before her.  Her white hair is a wild mass of tangles, her dress is ragged and torn, and she cries out, "Where is my child?  Where is my child?"

 

* * *

 

Beauty's keen beast ears twitch and she snaps to attention.  A white-haired woman holding a lantern stands over her.  Much to Beauty's surprise, the woman does not scream and flee.  "Where is my child?" she wails at Beauty.

"I don't know," Beauty stammers and rubs her eyes.  She blinks to clear her vision and sees that the woman wears a crazed expression.

"Where is my child?" she moans.

Remembering her own child and not knowing how long she has slept, Beauty picks up the mirror and holds it before her face.

"Magic mirror, if you please,

is my daughter safe in the trees?"

The mirror shows Rune sleeping snugly in fork of the tree and Beauty sighs with relief.  Two bony hands reach toward Beauty, palms upward in a pleading gesture.  "Where is my son?" the woman wails. 

And because Beauty empathizes with the poor woman, she addresses the mirror.

"Before this mother comes undone,

show us the location of her son."

The mirror's surface reveals a dark hillside where an autumn wind blows leaves about the white crosses of a small graveyard.

"Oh, I forgot," the woman murmurs.  "Sometimes I forget.  I will say a prayer for your daughter, that he does not come for her this night."

"Who is
he
?" Beauty asks.

"He likes to find mothers sleeping, that's the best time to steal children away," the woman wags a bony finger at Beauty.

Beauty can't be certain if the woman is mad, but she must know more.  She puts her buffalo-size head nose to nose with the woman and demands, "Who is he?"

"I will tell you my story and every word is true.  My little boy was very sick and I sat beside his cradle weeping.  It was late in the night of a bitter cold winter.  Someone knocked at our door and an old man came in wrapped in a horse blanket.  I bade him sit and I warmed him some beer.  My little one fell asleep and soon I did too.  I woke trembling from the cold and my boy was gone.  I ran from the house crying my son's name and saw a woman dressed in black.  She said,
I saw Death hurrying off with your child; he runs swifter than the wind and what he takes he never brings back.
  Tell me which way he went, I pleaded.  She said she was Night, that she knew which way he went, but would tell me only after I sang all the lullabies that I had sung to my baby." The woman wrings her hands and begins to sing.

"Where did he go?" Beauty exclaims and wrings her own hands to keep from shaking the woman.

"After I sang every song, weeping more tears than there were verses, she told me to turn right at the pine forest and follow that road, the very road on which we stand.  I came to a crossroads where grew a rosebush, its thorns covered in ice.  I asked if it had seen Death go by with my child.  It said it had indeed and would tell me after I warmed it with my heart.  So I pressed my breast to the bush and the thorns pierced me and drops of blood fell.  The bush shot new leaves and flowers bloomed, so warm is the heart of a grieving mother, and it told me which road to take.  Next I came to a lake too deep for me to wade across so I lay down at the shore and tried to drink it dry."

"That would never work," Beauty says impatiently.

"That's what the lake said, and that it collected pearls, and that my eyes were like pearls.  If I cried them out into the lake, it would carry me across to where Death's greenhouse stood, filled with the plants that are human lives.  I wept until my eyes sank to the bottom, and the lake lifted me to the other side.  Blindly I cried out,
Where shall I find Death?  He has taken my child.
  The old woman who guards Death's greenhouse answered,
He hasn't come back yet.  How did you find this place and who helped you?
 I told her that God helped me because He is merciful, and would not she show me the same mercy?  Where is my child?"  The woman moans and lifts the lantern high.

Beauty grabs the woman's thin arm.  "Was the lake near a bog?  Quickly, tell me more."

The woman coughs, a wretched phlegmy cough.  "The guardian said the trees and flowers there looked like those anywhere else except they have heartbeats. I could try to find the heartbeat of my child, but what would I give her if she told me what to do once I found it.  I said I had nothing to give, but would walk to the end of the world for her. 
There's nothing there I want
, she said,
but you can give me your beautiful, long black hair and take my white hair.
  We exchanged hair and entered the greenhouse.  I went from one to another of the tiniest plants, listening to the heartbeats, and soon I heard the heart of my son. 
This is his
, I cried, and the guardian told me not to touch it.  She said to stay where I was and when Death came in, I could prevent him from pulling it up by threatening to pull up some of the other flowers."

Beauty's heartbeat begins to quicken.  She lifts the mirror to her face and says in a rush: 

"Mirror, lest I faint of fright,

is Death on the prowl tonight?"

The mirror shows a hunched figure covered with a horsehair blanket loping down a road edged with stones. It could be the road leading to the forest in which Rune sleeps. Beauty turns her attention back to the woman's words.

" . .
. I
am God's gardener.  I uproot His flowers and trees and plant them again in the garden of paradise in the unknown land.  Against me you can do nothing
, Death said.  I screamed at him,
Give me back my child
, and I grabbed two flowers nearest me.  I told him I would tear up all his flowers for I didn't know what else to do. 
You say you're unhappy and yet now you will make others mothers as unhappy as you are,
Death replied.  Then he gave me my eyes, which he had fished from the lake bottom, and he bade me look into the well.  I looked and saw the whole lives of the two plants I was about to destroy: the first was blessed with joy and happiness, the second all sorrow and wretched misery.  I asked Death,
Tell me which is which,
" the woman cries and yanks her hair.

Beauty grabs the woman's shoulders and growls, "Tell me the rest and quickly, so I can save my daughter."

The woman's eyes lose their glaze and Beauty recognizes the dawning of fear within them.  "He--he wouldn't tell me except that one was my son."

Beauty groans and the woman stammers:  "I screamed,
Which one is my child?  Tell me!  He is innocent!  Save my child from such suffering!  Carry him away with you, carry him up to God!  Forget my tears!  Forget my prayers!  Forget everything that I have said and done!
 Then I fell on my knees and prayed,
Oh, God do not listen to me when my prayers are against your will, for that is always for the best.
 And Death carried my child into the unknown land."

Beauty takes off running down the road, and the woman's wail resounds through the night: "Where is my child?"  She has not run a half-mile when a woman cloaked in black steps into the middle of the road just ahead of Beauty.  "I will tell you which way Death went if you sing me all the lullabies you've sung for your child," Night says.

Beauty does not slow her pace; she raises her right arm waist high muttering, "Make a grieving mother sing, you sadistic creature."  Beauty bobs to the left, and upon reaching Night, swings her right arm and backhands Night ten feet into the pine forest.  Beauty sniffs with her purple cauliflower nose and follows the road to the right where Death’s scent hangs in the air.  A mile further she comes to a fork where a rosebush grows.  The ground quakes with Beauty's approach, and the rosebush begins to speak:  "Death passed this way, and I will tell you which road if . . . slow down . . . you . . ."