Pulchritude

by Ana Mardoll

  Ezio turned his head slightly to stare at the girl. She was astonishingly lovely, with honey-blonde hair that spread over her pillow like a curtain and skin the color of cream. With her eyes closed and her deep breathing, she looked innocent and vulnerable, though the effect was spoiled somewhat by her soft, rhythmic snores. In the dark, Ezio frowned. Though he had tumbled a few maidservants in the past, the trysts had been quick and clandestine; Ezio had never actually slept with a lover in the same bed. He hadn't mentally prepared for the idea that his wife might snore, and he wasn't pleased that the girl was exhibiting such a trait. Still, he supposed it was a small price for the return of his true form. If it bothered him in the future, Ezio reflected, he could always adopt his father's custom of separate bedrooms, but for now the shared bed was a necessity: he needed the girl to see that he could be trusted with her safety.

  The sun would be up soon, but Ezio suspected that after the strain of her journey the night before, the girl might sleep for most of the morning. He stifled a sigh. There was no telling how long it would take before the girl fell in love with him, and it was best to get started soon. For the moment, though, it was probably best to let her sleep rather than shake her awake and risk frightening her. Still, Ezio felt too restless to stay in bed any longer; he was awake now and wanted to make the most of the day. He decided he would visit Guerrino. Ezio hadn't seen the old man since he had woken Ezio a few hours before to report that the girl and her father had arrived at the gate.

  Slowly, so as not to disturb the sleeping girl, Ezio sat up in bed and maneuvered his body so that his feet touched the floor. He stood quietly and took a step away from the bed, but immediately realized that he had a problem: every step he took with his hard hooves on the stone floor, no matter how gingerly he moved, resulted in a loud clop that was deafening in the silent room. After the first few steps, each more careful than the last, Ezio stopped to think. A glance back at the bed told him that the girl was still sleeping as deeply as before. He tried sliding his hooves across the floor, but the scraping sound was even more jarring than the distinct clop of individual steps. He gritted his sharp teeth -- earning himself a light cut on his lip in the process -- and stepped as quietly as he could out of the bedroom, closing the door gently behind him.

  Once out in the hall, Ezio could move more freely. He breathed a quiet thanks, as he had every morning for the past fortnight, that his ancestral home had been built with extremely high ceilings. The vaulted ceilings had always seemed a design flaw in the past, making the castle uncomfortably breezy and cold, but the payoff was that he could navigate the hallways easily and could even climb the narrow steps of Guerrino's tower without too much stooping.

  The door to Guerrino's room was closed, and Ezio pounded excitedly on the wooden frame. After a long wait, he heard the bolt open on the other side, and the door opened. Guerrino stood on the other side of the door, dressed for bed and blinking sleepily at the prince. Ezio ducked his head and shouldered his way through the narrow door as Guerrino stepped back to accommodate the prince's tall frame.

  "Have you seen her?" Ezio asked the old man in triumph.

  "Is she gone? Is something wrong?" Guerrino looked immediately alert, his voice tinged with concern.

  Ezio laughed. "No, everything is perfect," he said. "I just meant: have you taken a good look at her yet?"

  The older man frowned. "No," he said, shaking his head, "I woke when they touched the gate last night. I waited to see from my window that they were coming down the road, and then I woke you. After I returned to my room, I didn't look out again for fear they might see me."

  Ezio regarded the older man curiously. "Why wouldn't you want them to see you?" he asked.

  Guerrino sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning. "Your Highness," he said in the dry, condescending tone that Ezio was learning to despise, "The girl is here to fall in love with an occupant of the castle. I think our odds will be better if she has only one candidate to choose from, rather than two."

  Ezio stared at Guerrino, wondering if the dour old man was making a joke. Guerrino did not smile, but Ezio laughed anyway at the absurdity of the suggestion. "Stay in your tower then, sir," the prince joked, "for I couldn't bear to lose my pretty new bride." He strode the length of the room to the window, too excited to stand still, and stared out at the slowly fading stars. "She's beautiful, Guerrino," he said quietly, almost reverently. "The fairy sent the most beautiful girl possible to redeem me."

  "Your Highness, I would imagine the girl's countenance to be little more than a happy coincidence," Guerrino said cautiously. "Visitations from fata are exceedingly rare, and they very rarely remain to intervene directly once a curse has been laid."

  The skepticism in Guerrino's voice irritated Ezio. He turned away from the window and fixed his advisor with a harsh stare. "You don't know that she didn't pick Bella for me," he argued. "She's everything I need, and that can't be simple coincidence." He started to clumsily tick off a list with his sharp claws. "She's beautiful. Her father is rich, he said so himself. Her dowry is probably richer than Adelina's. And," he finished triumphantly, "it's just a matter of time before she loves me and breaks the curse."

  Guerrino frowned, but instead of the argument Ezio was expecting, the older man simply yawned and said, "As you say, Your Highness. Where is the girl now?"

  "I left her asleep in the bedroom. She was exhausted after last night."

  Guerrino's eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak, but for once seemed at a loss for words. Finally he stammered, "You do not mean ..."

  "No." Ezio wrinkled his nose at the suggestion. "She thought the same thing," he said with a frown. "But the only important thing right now is breaking the curse. Anything else will wait."

  The old man looked relieved, and lapsed into his chiding tone. "Then why is she in your bedroom, Your Highness? The girl must have been scared to death to be brought there. Bad enough that you sent her father away."

  "He was only upsetting her," Ezio shot back. "And her being frightened was a good thing! She has to learn that she can trust me. If she doesn't trust me, she'll never love me."

  Ezio turned back to the window in frustration, annoyed at having to defend his own actions. "What does Guerrino know about love, anyway?" he thought angrily. Ezio couldn't recall the man ever having a woman, not even in the prince's childhood.

  For several long moments, the only sounds in the room were Ezio's heavy breathing and Guerrino's own soft wheeze. Ezio eyed the bright pinks and golds that were starting to gently streak up through the spring sky. If everything were as it should have been, he would have been helping Flavio to saddle the horses for a brisk morning ride, or maybe an early hunt. Instead, his horses were long gone from the stables, and he was trapped in a castle with a third-rate warlock who gave himself airs and a beautiful, but utterly low-born merchant's daughter. "Maybe she's secretly a princess," Ezio hoped. It was a comforting thought, at any rate.

  Behind him, the old man cleared his throat with a few thick coughs. "Dawn's coming up," he said. "You shouldn't leave her alone for too long. Is she terribly slender?"

  This last question caught the prince off-guard and Ezio turned to stare at him. "What?" he asked, completely puzzled. "I suppose she is rather slender, why?"

  Guerrino stood to join the prince at the window, peering out into the dim morning light. "I'm concerned about the fence," the old man mused quietly. "I put the bars as close together as I could, but I think a child or a very slender adult could squeeze through the bars with enough effort."

  Ezio stared out the window at the gleaming silver fence that Guerrino had painstakingly erected in the days following his curse. The roses were the key to his restoration, Guerrino had explained, and their protection was paramount. From that first morning, Ezio had acutely felt each nibble as the wild does ventured out of the forest to break their fast at the magical hedge, and as each rose died, he could feel a piece of his humanity
slipping away.

  Those first few days had been the worst, with little sleep and even less time to mourn what he had lost. Guerrino had drawn runes on the tower floor and chanted in strange languages from dawn until dusk, while Ezio patrolled the perimeter of the estate for hours with only quick snatches of sleep each night. The silver gate had grown slowly out of the ground, inch by inch, until finally it was too tall for any man or beast to climb over. A solid wall would have been better, but Guerrino barely had the strength to complete the delicate fence; Ezio did not think the old man would have survived a more ambitious attempt. To drive away the smaller animals, the warlock had used a dose of Ezio's urine to lay a spell on and around the thick thorn hedge: now the sharp scent of a predator permanently drove away the foxes and hares from the bright blossoms.

  Almost two weeks after the night of the curse, the fence was complete and Ezio's humanity was safe from the nibbles and pickings of both man and beast. The only way in or out of the estate was through the gate, which was lined with so many enchantments that a single human touch would alert Guerrino to a stranger's presence. Then the two men had rested, and waited.

  "It's good that the merchant came when he did," Ezio reflected. "Any earlier and the fence would have been too short to trap him." It was just one more piece of evidence that the girl was a blessing sent specifically to him. "You're worried she'll escape," Ezio said flatly.

  "It had crossed my mind," the older man said dryly.

  Ezio considered this for a moment. "Can you add new bars to fill in the gaps?"

  "No. I'd have to take the fence down and start from the beginning, and ..." Guerrino didn't need to finish the sentence. The first effort had been exhausting, and he was still not quite recovered; Ezio doubted he could manage a second attempt.

  "Could you cast another spell?" Ezio asked doubtfully. "Like the urine? Something to keep her inside and away from the fence?"

  Guerrino looked thoughtful. "We keep the rabbits away from the hedge with the smell of wolves," he said slowly, "maybe we can keep the girl away from the gate with the sound of them."

  "Can you do that?" Ezio asked curiously.

  "It shouldn't be too hard." Guerrino had stepped over to his work table, his hands flipping gently through the thin pages of his grimoire. "A few howls at night ... some growls and a few shadows when she walks near the fence ... If she gets too bold, I can even conjure a convincing construct. It won't smell like the real thing, and wouldn't fool another animal, but it can bite and a human won't be able to tell the difference."

  "Perfect," Ezio agreed, relieved that they had a solution.

  "Your best bet is still to keep an eye on her at all times," Guerrino cautioned.

  "I will," the prince promised. "I was going to take her on a tour of the castle today anyway, let her see her new home as a princess."

  Guerrino frowned. "You're not thinking of telling her who you really are?"

  There was that condescending tone again, and Ezio frowned, trying to work out what the objection could possibly be. He gave up, and tried to shrug off the question. "Why wouldn't I?"

  The old man fixed him with a weary scowl. "Your Highness," he said, "The girl is here to fall in love with you, not your title. If you tell her you're an enchanted prince, will she even have a chance to fall in love with you, or will she fall in love with the prince?"

  Ezio stared at Guerrino as his words sank in. "That's very cynical, isn't it?" he asked icily.

  "It doesn't hurt to be careful," the old man said with a shrug, turning his back on the prince and returning to his magic book. Ezio had the distinct impression that he was being dismissed.

  "This curse can't be lifted too soon," the prince thought. Once things went back to normal, his first order of business would be to find a nice country cottage for his advisor to retire to, the farther away the better.

  Ezio crept quietly back to his bedroom, but when he opened the door and stepped inside, the sound of his hooves seemed to wake the young girl. Her saw her eyes open, slowly and sleepily at first, and then widen in confusion and shock as she registered her surroundings. She looked up at him in the doorway of the bedroom, and an expression of sudden, undisguised horror flitted over her face. Immediately, the girl realized her mistake: her face reflexively pulled back into a winsome smile that failed to reach her eyes, and she ran a hand nervously through her tangled hair.

  Were it not for the frightened girl in his bed, the day would feel like any other: the morning sunlight shone brightly through the window slits and spilled on to the stone floor in bright patterns. The juxtaposition of her terror with the mundane details of the morning filled Ezio with nervous energy, and he couldn't help but laugh at how absurd the situation was. He tilted his head back as the strange cacophony of animal noises that was his laughter flowed from him, and he only hoped the sound wouldn't scare her too much.

  "Good morning, darling," he said cheerily to the poor girl when his laughter subsided. He gave her what he hoped was a rueful smile. "I'm afraid I don't improve much in the morning light, but you are even more beautiful now than you were in last night's moonlight." He was gratified to see the girl's wide, nervous smile ease into a smaller, but more genuine, crooked grin at this compliment.

  "Thank you ... my lord," she stammered quietly, still tightly clutching the sheet in her fists as though it were the anchor to her sanity.

  "I'm just Ezio," he said simply, remembering Guerrino's advice. He pushed the thought of the old man from his mind and smiled more warmly. "And you are Bella?" She nodded. "It suits you," he said, bowing his head a little as if he were meeting her for the first time.

  The girl blinked at him before smiling again. "Thank you." Her voice was warm, but cautious. Ezio supposed that the radiant girl was used to such compliments when she gave her name.

  "You must be hungry," he said gently. "You travelled a long way last night, I know. I'll step out in the hallway so that you can take a few minutes to wake up, and when you're ready, we'll go eat breakfast together."

  The girl nodded vigorously and her hand ran nervously through her hair again. Ezio gestured to a corner of the room where a small side chamber led off into shadows. When his mother had been alive, she had decorated the chamber as a dressing-room and it had never been renovated into anything else after her death. "You can use anything you like in there," he offered. "I think there are several brushes on the vanity table." With that, he backed out of the doorway and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 11 - Bella

  Bella stared at the closed door where the beast had stood a moment before. The shock of seeing the hideous creature in the morning light was fading, and her mind was seized with a heavy drowsiness. Yesterday's events -- her father's announcement and their arrival at the castle -- seemed like a hazy dream, and yet here she was in this stone room. Slowly she unclenched the sheet from her fists and rubbed her fingers gingerly around her sleep-crusted eyes, hoping to clear her sight and her mind at the same time.

  Light streamed down through the high windows of the bedroom. It registered in her mind that she had not woken gradually with the morning, but rather at an unfamiliar noise -- she had woken when the beast opened the bedroom door, she realized. She glanced down at the bed and took in the mussed sheets beside her that still radiated a faint warmth and were covered with a fine layer of animal hair. "He slept here last night ... but woke before I did?" Bella wondered. Maybe he had gone for a walk while she still slept. "He was awake, while I was asleep," she realized. And he hadn't touched her. He had remained true to his word.

  The relief she felt in the wake of this realization was enormous. Whatever else might happen to her in this strange castle, it seemed that the beast was not interested in hurting her, or at least not yet. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and realized that she was wearing the same clothes and shoes as the night before; she felt grimy and her scalp was starting to itch. She stepped into the side chamber the beast had indicated and smiled in delight at
the bright little room. A fine vanity table dominated the small room at the far wall and the rich dark wood of the table was lit brightly from the side by a beautiful stained-glass window.

  Gingerly, Bella ran her fingers over the items on the vanity, scarcely daring to breathe. A variety of brushes and combs glinted up at her in the light. Each brush was inlaid with patterns of tiny gems, and the combs were tipped with precious metals. The smallest comb had six teeth, each as long as her tiniest finger, and was made entirely of pure silver. Bella carefully picked up the glittering comb and ran it gently through her hair, marveling at the novelty of the sensation. "I'm using money to dress my hair," Bella thought, suppressing a giggle. The slender comb wasn't worth much, she knew -- she had seen Marchetta spend a comparable lump of silver coins on their monthly grocery expenses -- yet the novelty of distilling that money into a single hair-comb seemed absurdly excessive, even for someone who lived in a castle.

  "A castle ..." Bella's mind jumped at the thought and she looked around her, feeling as though she was registering her surroundings for the first time. She wondered where she was in relation to her home. Bella had lived her entire life in the village and had only traveled with Father once to the city on one of his business trips, long ago when she was a little girl. She didn't know of any castles near their home, and had been too grief-stricken on the ride yesterday to notice which roads they had taken. "East or west or north or south?" she thought in singsong, feeling a rising sense of panic, but it was no use -- the last time she remembered the sun, it was shining on her home as she waved goodbye to her stepmother and stepsisters. After that she remembered only gathering darkness.