I, Beast

Site hosted by Angelfire.com: Build your free website today!

Chapter V: The princess of ice

From this day, the relation with Beauty changed: she smiled more and walked in my castle as if she were at home. She had understood from which came her phobia, which had cured her of a blow. But unfortunately, the fairy had not said her last word...
The day after this memorable day, Beauty met me in the library. I had asked her to come in this place that I liked much - almost as much as my roses - and she stood timidly in front of me, without daring to look at the rows of books which were aligned in front of her.
"Milord," she said with a small bow while appearing in front of me.
Stoat and Maguy had undertaken - to my request - to teach her some rudiments from the life in the "high society" and Beauty proved to be a very good pupil, even if she hardly seemed to show of enthusiasm: for her, it was clear that one day - near, according to her - I would weary of her and that I would send her back to the village where all that she would have learned here would not be useful for her at all. Such was not my intention.
I observed Beauty surreptitiously; her glance shone of intelligence and it was visible that what I hoped to teach her would not cost her much. I had in the pocket of my jacket a small book, very simple, of which she certainly knew the history - at least, I hoped it - because it was one of the tales on which I was brought up and I was almost sure that one still told it to the children to send them to sleep.
"Will you agree to sit beside me, Beauty?" I asked by showing her the seat next to that on which I had just sat.
She hesitated only one negligible second: I knew that she did not like to be too close to people, be it me, Jod or the servants. She crossed the room and sat down on the seat covered with old dark red velvet. Maguy had insisted to make her wear a long dress of a pale green, which was very well harmonised with her long russet-red hair fastened on her nape and retained by mother-of-pearl combs. Maguy had told me that Beauty had obstinately refused the combs encrusted with precious stones.
"Why did you ask me to come here, Milord?" she questioned almost at once.
Her way of always calling me by my title irritated me a little, but I did not know which alternative to propose her: to ask her to call me "the Beast" would not cease pointing out to me the monster I had become and I had well too much pride to like that one remind it to me, especially that it sometimes happened to me to forget it, in general when I was in front of my magic mirror, which could not reflect my image.
I took the book from my pocket and I posed it on my knees.
"Did you hear about the story of the tiger prince, Beauty?"
"The tiger prince, Milord? The one who leaves in the forest to find his double animal?"
"Exactly."
She thought a moment.
"Somebody told it to me, a very long time ago," she finally said, with a pensive tone. "I don't remember who, on the other hand. I don't think that my parents did, because they did not have time and I do not remember them. If they had told me this story, I would remember them, wouldn't I? It's not Jod either: we did not have time, we had always far too much work to do."
She fell silent a moment, then looked up at me.
"Why do you ask me this question?"
"This book," I answered, putting the hand on the small work which was on my knees, "tells the history of the tiger prince. Would you like to rediscover it?"
"You want to read me a story as if I were a child?" she said, incredulous.
I could see, to the amused gleam which danced in her eyes, that she wanted to laugh.
"No, Beauty," I said with much serious, "I want you to read it by yourself."
Her eyes became almost suspicious.
"I cannot read, Milord," she recalled me and I was unable to know if, yes or not, she was wounded to have to acknowledge such a thing.
"Do you want to learn how to read, Beauty?"
She looked at me lengthily.
"It's not the good question, Milord; the good question is: will you have the patience to teach me how to read? I do not know how much time I will need to learn and I do not know if I will be up to the hopes you place in me."
Hell! She was right! I knew my sharp character, too sharp, and I knew that if she did not progress at the speed I expected, I would be irritated with her.
"Will you have the kindness to excuse my bad language and my sudden changes of mood?" I retorted, unable to think of something else than the fact that I wanted to teach her to read.
"You are my lord," she said without really answering my question.
And it was how began her training to the reading. I had never taught someone to read and I absolutely did not remember the way in which I had learned myself, so that my methods could appear quite strange to somebody more with the fact than me. I started by opening the book on the quest of the tiger prince in the first page and I bared one of my claws which I posed under the first word.
"This word is read 'once'."
I continued the reading, articulating carefully, reading slowly and indicating each time the word I pronounced.
"Once upon a time was a young prince, whose family, since generations, had been related to the tiger, the prince of the forests. Their emblem was the tiger and the son of the family had to prove to be as courageous as it."
When I met a word which we had already seen, I kept silent and Beauty was to try to find it. She recognised very quickly the word "tiger". I was quick to discover that my little pupil had an excellent memory. When I arrived at the end of the first "chapter" - the story was so short that one could with difficulty speak about chapters - she asked me, to my great surprise, to read again what I just read to her and she leaned more towards me for following well the words that I indicated progressively.
Taken in the story - it was one of my favourite - I was quite frustrated to have to stop at the end of the first chapter, but I remembered in time that the goal was to teach how to read to her and not to read again this story. But, separately the fact that I read aloud, the situation was so similar to when I read a book for myself that I forgot very quickly to ask her whether she knew the word, which appeared to suit her perfectly. I was really an execrable professor.
At the end of the second reading of the first chapter, I decided that it was enough for once and I left the book on the seat which I left. I took politely leave of Beauty and regained my apartments: I did not want to risk a confrontation which would have ended up being inevitable if I had remained longer in her company. My mirror stated to me at once that Beauty had gone in her room to change clothes. She came out equipped as a boy and took the path of the garden of roses.
The magic made so that she immediately found a hut containing the tools for gardening. She began with hoe carefully around the feet of the rose trees and then, to my great surprise, she sat down in the grass and the wet soil, surrounded her knees of her arms and started to speak to the flowers. My surprise was not really that she spoke to them - I often happened to say to a rose tree to grow and to flower - but rather what she told them: because she was not asking them to grow, to make efforts to flower and to have the most beautiful flowers, she told them stories!
The history she had chosen was that of a princess locked up in a palace of ice, which reminded me of a tale of my childhood, but what Beauty said hardly resembled to what I remembered.
"Once upon a time was a very beautiful princess who lived in a palace of ice," started Beauty. "The walls were of ice, the ground also, as well as the ceilings. Her bed was of ice and the covers were of snow. The princess was really very beautiful; among the other women, she would have been like a rose among the other flowers."
As she told this story to my rose trees, I supposed that the final goal of the story was to flatter the ego of the rose trees a little, even if that could appear completely stupid at first sight.
"The princess had splendid hair white like snow, was always clothed of immaculate white and even her lips were white. One could have believed that she had been carved in snow, then animated by magic, except that her eyes were of the deepest black. At the time when the story starts, the princess had the impression to awake of a very long sleep, because she felt foreign in this marvellous palace where she lived, and where she had certainly passed all her life, even if she did not remember it. From her awakening, she undertook to explore the palace. Each new room which she discovered filled her up of amazement, for even if all could appear uniform since all was of ice, each wall, each ceiling was carved in an astonishing way. She was however astonished not to find a single statue or decorative object. All that was not the walls, the ceiling, the ground and the gates formed part of the utility objects, like the tables, the chairs or the bed."
She fell silent a moment, held out the hand and gently stroked one of the petals of a white rose.
"There was not even flowers," she said with a strangled voice, "and the poor princess had not found a gate going outside. As for the windows, so fine the ice was, that did not enable her to see through and she had the impression to be in a prison of frost."
I was sure that my glance misled me, but it seemed to me to see my rose trees quivering of indignation: how a palace, however marvellous it was, could dare to claim to do without flowers to embellish itself? Beauty smiled nicely.
"Lastly, the beautiful princess found a room where there was no utility object and where there was something which was purely decorative. It was a statue, but what a statue! It was the statue of a man, large, right and proud, who gave an impression of power. The artist who had created this statue had had to become exhausted to make of it his masterpiece, to become exhausted to make his more beautiful creation, because it was a pure wonder. In front of this statue, the princess forgot instantaneously all that she had just seen in the palace, all that had dazzled her with each step, and she saw nothing any more but this splendid statue. In spite of herself, she approached and held out the hand towards the beautiful face of the statue. Her hand ran up against an invisible wall and she realised quickly that this wall surrounded the statue as if it was protecting it. The beautiful princess felt frustrated: why put a so beautiful statue in this deserted place and thus protect it? It seemed to her to hear a voice murmur to her: 'What the magic did, the magic can demolish it' and she took courage again."
This sentence appeared to me so adapted to my case that I wanted almost to crash the mirror into pieces so that the hope which gave me the voice of Beauty would cease: which hope did I have? I was not the beautiful prince of the tales, there was no beautiful princess who wanted more than all to deliver me! My delivery rested on an impossible thing, no, two: I had to love and this same person had to love me in return! Each one of these conditions was impossible to realise by itself alone, the combination of both could lead only to one even greater impossibility.
"The princess took courage again," continued Beauty by looking at her attentive audience - what else could do a rose tree? - "because if the protection which surrounded the statue were of magic origin, she could make it disappear! Hadn't she been told, a long time ago, a so long time that she didn't remembered when anymore, neither which, nor where, that she was the greatest magician who was ever born? It seemed to her suddenly that her spirit swarmed with thousand spells and that, among them, there was one which could release the statue of its protective wall. She did not wonder why she wanted so much to make disappear this wall, she just knew that something pushed her towards this statue and that perhaps, if she succeeded in releasing it, she would manage to create a new beauty within this palace which seemed to her so empty and so dead."
Was it my memory which was missing to me or was it Beauty who completely invented this story from the fragments she remembered? The fact remained that the story that I knew of the princess in the palace of ice did not have absolutely anything to do with what I heard. As far as I was concerned, I remembered the presence of a wizard in the castle and not of a splendid statue.
"The princess searches among her memories, seeking a spell to make disappear the invisible wall, but it was in vain. She remained all the day in the room where was the statue and, at the hours of the meals, when she turned over, she found food on a table behind her - which had emerged from nowhere -, served in dishes of ice and each cover was an icicle which however did not cool her hands. She ends up thinking, in a crisis of despair, that her heart was to be frozen through living in this so cold palace and that she did not have any more any heat in it to love somebody and really wish to deliver it. To check this theory, she wanted to try the spell which had always been her preferred spell: the one that enabled her to create roses."
I was sure, this time, the rose trees had really quivered of pride. My red rose tree even seemed to raise the head higher, as if it refused to admit defeat when a voice as convinced as Beauty's said to it that the most beautiful of the spells was that which created roses.
"She thought lengthily, because she did not want to make a mistake. The princess knew very well that the magic was dangerous and that the least error in a spell could wound her, even kill her. She held out her hands that she cupped in front of her and, eyes closed, she pronounced the spell; she felt something light settling with the hollow of her palms and she reopened the eyes, a feeling of pride inflating her heart. The tears went up to her eyes by seeing that the flower that she had created was of frost. She was sure, now, that her heart was as frozen as the walls which surrounded her and imprisoned her. Her tears ran on her cheeks and fell on the rose from frost. That made like dew on the petals of ice."
Her light fingers wiped the last traces of dew on the white flower she had already stroked.
"The beautiful princess didn't admit defeat: she wanted to believe that she did a mistake in her spell, that she had missed conviction, and she persisted, starting again and again, until the moment when the ground was strewn with roses of frost around her. Exhausted, disappointed and furious, she scattered the roses in all the room and some rolled to the foot of the statue. The princess did not even notice it and, now that she had place around her again, she started again to cast the spell. Soon all the ground of the room was covered with roses of frost and, strangely, there was a strewn of them to the foot of the statue, which made like a bunch. The princess realised it and timidly held out the hand towards one of the roses which touched the base of the statue. She did not meet the least wall. She stood up, because she had sat down on the ground to cast the spell, and approached the statue. Lastly, finally, after a long day - was this only one day or longer, she did not know it, because she had lost the notion of time by persisting - she could touch the statue of her fingers, to discover the finely carved features."
Beauty changed position, stretching her legs a little. It seemed to me to see the rose trees growing impatient, as if they wondered where this story could carry out and, honestly, I also wondered which could be the goal of it. Beauty appeared to realise it and had a laughter half tired.
"But the princess was disturbed by something which had not shocked her until now: the statue was completely colourless, entirely made of ice, and if that had not annoyed her for the walls and furniture, that singularly disturbed her on this statue. Now that she saw it more closely, it seemed to her almost inhuman without any colour. She had to try to remember a spell able to return their colour to the things in this so cold palace. She tested initially on the roses, starting by trying to obtain a dark red. The first rose became a splendid red rose, the second was yellow, the third white and the fourth pink. Then she was involved to make different tone from pink, until obtaining one which resembles the colour of the skin. She also created black roses and even a blue rose. Then she tackled the statue and transformed it into a splendid young man with black hair and blue eyes."
I squeaked the teeth: I hated that one speaks to me about splendid young men with black hair and blue eyes, especially that as far as I was concerned, I had never had blue eyes.
"The princess found that the statue was much more beautiful thus, but it always missed the life. She joins together the roses of frost and made bunches of them which she laid out in various so sad rooms. When she returned in the room where was the statue, she wrinkled the eyebrows a short moment, having the impression that the statue looking now almost alive had moved. She shrugged, sure to be mistaken, but when she returned a second time, the statue was close to the window. She approached the statue and brushed timidly against the naked shoulder. The statue turned to face her."
An animated statue! I would have sworn it, that existed only in Beauty's mind: never such an idea had been inserted in a tale for children. Not in that of the princess in the palace of ice, in any case.
"Stupor paralysed the princess on the spot, continued Beauty. The statue smiles and the princess felt that under her fingers, it was not any more the cold of the ice, but the heat of a human body, a heat which was not her and she realised she was herself cold like the palace and like the statue had been. It was the reason for which she had not felt the cold of the forks and spoons. The statue, which was not any more one, now, but which was a well alive young man, spoke to the princess: 'My lady, I must thank you for having released me from my curse. A wizard had condemned me to remain in this shape until a girl with a generous heart finds the means of transforming the ice into flesh.' The princess couldn't initially say anything, but the appearance of a third person exempted her to answer. The young man recognised the wizard in the person who had just arrived and he exclaimed: 'Too late! Your curse ended!' The wizard smiled. 'Not so, young presumptuous, because you miss something. Your too beautiful princess is only a lure! She's only one of my creations, done of ice, like all this palace, and because she's of ice, she misses something. She does not have a heart, small cock, and as she does not have a heart, she did not give you one either!' To his great shame, the young man could note that the wizard was right."
The rose trees gave all their attention to the storyteller, obviously intrigued by this strange tale which did not seem to carry out anywhere. Beauty had a slight mysterious smile and began again:
"Whereas the wizard triumphed and that the young man, overpowered, did not dare any more to look at whom he had believed to be his saviour, the beautiful princess did not understand: she did not have a heart? Which difference did it make? Hadn't she succeeded in breaking the curse nevertheless? Then entered a fourth person, who was a rather banal girl, but who held in her arms an immense armful of roses of all the colours, and the princess recognised her own roses, those which she had created, except that there was now something different: the tears of ice posed on the petals had become true dew and the flowers themselves appeared alive! If the princess had given again the life with this young man, who had been private only by a curse, this unknown girl had given the life to roses which had never been alive! The newcomer came to the young man and presented him a rose: 'Smell it, Milord, smell it. Five minutes ago, she did not have any odour, she did not even have life. Five minutes ago, you did not have a heart...' She put her hand on the chest of the young man, where should have beaten his heart, then smiled. 'And now?' she asked. And the young man noted with amazement that a heart beat in his chest!"
The lips of Beauty raised now a triumphing smile; my conviction was made: there were some details which pointed out the tale of the princess in the palace of the ices such as I knew it, but all the remainder was entirely drawn from Beauty's imagination!
"The wizard placed the young man in front of a choice: did it wish the beautiful princess or the so banal stranger? Strangely, the young man, who was actually a prince, scorned the beautiful princess and chooses the stranger, who was of mean extraction. 'One gave me life back, but the other returned my heart to me. Without heart, the life would not have any savour', he explained to the wizard who was astonished by his choice. The beautiful princess looked at the young man and his fianc�e leave, then the wizard and found herself all alone in the large empty and so cold palace. She started to weep bitterly because she did not have a heart and that in fact, she was only the creation of a wizard and not a person of flesh and blood. She ran a long time in the corridors, until she finds a gate giving on outside and she decided to adventure into the world to find a heart. But this, my friends, is another story..."
The rose trees appeared crestfallen and Beauty burst out laughing.
"There is a moral with all that, my friends: the beautiful princess had created splendid roses, with splendid colours, but despite everything, her roses were only roses of ice, without the least life in them. Whereas the poor unknown girl, without anything other that her good heart, gave them the life, the softness of the petals, the odour!"
Beauty stood up and leaned on the rose trees, to entrust to them:
"It is certainly a prince who planted you, small rose trees, but now, I am the only one being able to keep you in life! Therefore forgive the poor girl not to be a beautiful princess without heart, but rather a villager without education, ready to give her heart to save rose trees of death!"
I have the impression that the rose tree nearest to her tried cautiously to surround her with its branches, but again, I rejected this idea, so much I found it stupid.
Beauty said good-bye to my rose trees and came back in her room. Maguy waited there and decided Beauty needed a bath, idea that I entirely shared, because the girl had dirtied herself while gardening and while sitting down in grass and the ground to tell her story. My mirror died out when the door of the bathroom closed and I could think more calmly to the story than I had just heard.
I was sure that this story was a story on two levels. Perhaps, initially, was a story only made for my rose trees, but there was another degree, which was addressed to me. I ended by asking me whether there were not a second force in all this story, a second force which made everything to counter the influence of the fairy, a second force which had sent Beauty to me whereas I had decided to withdraw from the world, a second force which used Beauty to make comprehensible something to me.
Because there was a moral for me as well, in the tale Beauty had told: the choice of the young man was addressed to me initially and not to the rose trees. The young man had chosen the plain girl, without birth, without dowry except her heart, rather than the beautiful princess who precisely did not have any heart. The plain girl, the storyteller had said it herself, was the allegory of Beauty. Could it be that the young man, the statue, was me? But who was the beautiful princess? Was this the representation of all these girls of the high society who I had observed so long in the hope to find among them the one who would release me? Because when I sought the girl, I had never sought among the country-women; I had only wanted girls of high row, with the same level of culture as mine, with a frequentation of the same company. There is no doubt that Beauty would have felt ill at ease in a ball as that which my parents had organised the day when I had met Rose Line.
But actually, was this so significant? I was myself somebody wild, who hardly liked to go out and who could not shine in society. What would I have made with a wife who liked only balls and luxurious parties? And Beauty, in spite of her simplicity, wasn't she able to show up all these stuck-up girls who, like Rose Line, had the empty head and knew only one thing: to give reason to their husband, even when he was wrong, and to admire him constantly? Beauty was not that model.
I shrugged - mentally, because to make the gesture actually made me suffer - and tried to think to anything else: it didn't have any importance at all, since in any event, I had decided to oppose the fairy. If the curse were not broken, that would be because I would have chosen it and I did not certainly hope to bind this poor Beauty with my fate when the only desire she had was to run out of this castle to find Jod and the world which she knew since her birth.
Beauty emerged from the bathroom, clothed with a light white dress which released a little her shoulders and I was struck by her wearing of queen. The fact of not being clothed anymore like a boy forced her to change her way of being and she appeared transfigured - if the fact were excluded that she felt awfully ill at ease. The dress that had chosen Maguy emphasised the slenderness - or rather the thinness - of my little Beauty and almost succeeded in hiding all the prominent bones. The released shoulders were... perfect, from my point of view. During my long observation of the external world by my mirror, I had seen the modes changing and I had also seen a certain number of naked shoulders. The delicate fastener of the neck among women had always fascinated me and I found Beauty's remarkable.
It was that day that I realised that my little Beauty, that I regarded still as a child, a little a tomboy, was really a woman. I thought that she was very young, younger than my Katherine, but which was her real age? Her phobias made her appear more vulnerable, her clothes of boy made her thinner than she was actually and all that showed her to me like a child. Now, with her more adapted clothing, her wearing of queen and her new insurance, she was radiant and I felt a pinching in the heart, as if I had just lost the woman-child whom I mixed up with for some time. I rejected these stupid ideas out of my mind.
I looked at Beauty with an absent-minded eye, lost in my considerations on her new appearance, and, if I were perfectly conscious that she muttered something while going, I did not know absolutely what and I did not seek to know it either. I was also unaware of where she went. And then, when I sought to forget the absurd thoughts who came me, I deferred my attention on her. The path she followed me was familiar: it was the library's! What could Beauty desire to do in the library?
While entering the large room which contained all my books, Beauty raised a little the voice by completing her sentence and I recognised with amazement the last sentences of the Tiger Prince that I had read to her earlier in the course of the day. She had memorised all that I had read to her! The small book was always where I had left it, on the seat of dark red velvet. Beauty was going to sit down on the ground, but remembered at the last minute which she had what she called herself a "beautiful dress" and she sat down - with much grace, noticed part of my mind - on the closest armchair. She took the book of a hand which trembled a little and opened it in the first page. Her small index was posed under the first word.
"Once," she murmured. "Those four words mean 'Once upon a time'."
And she read again the first chapter, happy when she met a word which she already knew. Arrived at the end, she embarked on the reading of the second chapter and this time, she did not have any more her fabulous memory to help her. She retrogressed frequently, to find a certain word in a context which she already knew and I was astonished by the speed of her progress. She carefully read again the second chapter, her index following the words while, with her other hand, she rubbed her temple automatically.
I saw to her small thin face that a terrible headache was attacking her, but she continued to read, persisting and, inside me, I knew the cause of this eagerness: she wanted me to be proud of her, that I did not have any reason to be irritated with her - I wondered whether she was scared stiff of me when I was in anger or quite simply if she did not support that somebody raises the voice in her presence - and for this reason, she was ready to exhaust herself.
Her nimble mind had already located more than one rule of pronunciation and she recited in a drone the word as she could, repeating it until she found to which word that corresponded and she made the correspondence between the word which she had just read and the one she said. I was astounded by the speed to which she learned; that seemed to me supernatural. The idea that I had already had returned: and if there were a second force in all this story? Could it exploit Beauty's mind to make her learn more quickly all that I wanted to teach her? I smiled in spite of me - imagining my chops curling on my fangs; I always tried to avoid to show them, but I have seen my reflection in a surface too brilliant and, when I smiled, one really saw only my fangs sparkling with whiteness - and I thought that the only force which could be able to make that was the god to who I have kept all my faith, in spite of all that happened, or rather, the goddess.
Shuqra. Could it be that she intervenes? My goddess, holder of wisdom, often supported those which were devoted to the intellectual things. Had she thus chosen to protect Beauty? And then, suddenly, a thought froze me: who Shuqra protected Beauty from? Was it from the fairy or... from me? I felt my heart sank whereas I looked with a desperate air at Beauty still reading.

[Back] [Home] [Next]

Text � Azrael 2000.
Holly's ice room. Copyright � Jeffrey K. Bedrick 1996. Used with permission.
Set Hour Time, from Moyra/Mystic PC.