Beast

by Lisa Jensen

  I hide my face in Beast’s thick mane as he leaps off the stairs and gallops for the open double doors. It feels like flying, sailing out over the porch and down the wide front steps. I hear his hooves crunching gravel behind us as we race across the flat upper courtyard, amid the shrieks and shouting of wedding guests. I see Rose’s sisters on their feet at their table, throwing themselves together in terror, clutching each other like children. They have heard their father’s stories and Rose’s, but perhaps they have not truly believed them. Until now.

  “Our sister’s monster!” Blanche gasps, calculating, perhaps, how the sudden appearance of this apparition might have changed their sister’s fortunes — and their own.

  “He will eat us!” cries Violette, whose concerns are much more practical.

  “Perhaps he has eaten our sister,” Blanche chimes in hopefully.

  “Help! Save us! The monster has eaten our sister!” they shriek together, adding their voices to the din that rages behind us.

  I would laugh if I had time; Blanche and Violette are far more likely to make a meal of their sister than Beast ever was.

  We make for the driveway into the protection of the arch of roses. I can smell their heavy fragrance as we pass beneath them, and I wonder if Beast suffers much to be leaving them behind. As we speed down the drive, I dare a glance backward and see a marvelous sight. All the glorious red blooms on every stem in every terraced hedge and the arch overhead all turn toward us as we gallop by. And every one we pass releases its scarlet petals into the air, like a flurry of snow, like a shower of rice thrown over a bridal couple, so the air is thick with fluttering red rose petals. It’s a farewell to Beast from his beloved roses, a cloud of red petals to camouflage our escape. And the wonder of it momentarily freezes our pursuers. The mob of servants and guardsmen and a few brave guests clatters to an uneasy halt on the steps behind us, struggling against their own amazement before they dare to spill down the rest of the way after us, rattling their weapons.

  But ahead, the gilded iron gates have clanged shut; we are trapped like one of Jean-Loup’s deer. And the gatekeeper leans out the upper window of the gatehouse, a long-handled crossbow at the ready in his shaking hands, pointing at us.

  “Halt!” he shouts.

  Beast stops, animal muscles stretched out at the gallop freezing on the instant, with scarcely a stumble. He rises up slowly on his hind feet, shaking me gently to the ground behind him; he spreads his arms and raises his paws, feathers rising slightly along his back. He is Beast Rampant, in all his terrible glory.

  “If you mean to kill me, Man, you are welcome to try,” Beast rumbles at the gatekeeper, who is too stupefied to respond. “But harm this lady in any way, and you will answer to me — phantom or flesh, dead or alive!”

  The weapon wavers in the gatekeeper’s grasp; his hands can scarcely steady it, and his nervous finger barely stretches to the trigger. He can’t think what to make of this nightmare that speaks with a human voice. Beast remains on his hind feet, and I realize it is to shield me, his feathers fanning out nearly to the ground.

  “If you let her go through,” he growls to the gatekeeper, nodding at the gate, “I will consent to be your prisoner.”

  “You will not!” I cry, and I dart in front of him.

  “But let us pass, and you will sleep well all the rest of your days,” Beast goes on, catching me gently by the waist from behind, “knowing you have done a great kindness for your fellow beings.”

  The gatekeeper stares at us, astonished to hear a cornered animal plead so eloquently for its life. He can’t know this frightful beast is the chevalier who employs him. But the gatekeeper appears to have no desire to kill a creature for sport, especially one who can reason and speak so persuasively, and the tip of the bolt in his bow dips slightly. That the creature speaks at all must be evidence of a miracle, or perhaps witchcraft, and it’s plain the gatekeeper doesn’t know which possibility to fear more.

  The mob is cascading down the gravel driveway behind us, but even as the gatekeeper lowers his weapon in confusion, I realize there will never be time for him to throw open the gates again. But in the next moment, I feel myself swept up in Beast’s great, padded paws. Gripped in his strong arms, nestled against the warm fur of his chest, I feel we are rising in the air, higher than Beast could possibly leap. The ground is falling away, and, angling my head to look at his face, I see his two enormous feathered wings rising up behind him. The deep whoomp-whoomp of their stately beating echoes in the air as we are carried higher still, until we are sailing over the gilded gates. He glances down at me, joy and awe sparkling in his dark eyes; then he leans again into the task, cradling me snugly against himself. I can feel the taut power in his animal body as we gain the sky under his angel wings.

  He is beautiful!

  Over the gate we go, and then we are above the bridge across the moat. With another few heavy, measured wing beats, we are gliding out over the moat. Then we descend again to earth at the far end of the stone bridge. The swans natter at us as we land, and they puff up their own feathery wings in salute. I slide out of Beast’s arms, he folds his magnificent wings, and I climb aboard his back once again. We gallop into the cover of the trees, down the trail along the ridge that overlooks the town. Behind us, the gates remain closed, shutting in the mob, even as they clamor to pursue us. Perhaps it is the last of Mère Sophie’s enchantment.

  Farther below, well out of sight of the château, we take refuge in a budding apple orchard that borders a steep, sloping vineyard. Beast slows to a trot and then stops to rest. I slide off his back and stand beside him, stroking his unruly mane as he pants from his exertions. Despite his powerful haunches, his spine is not made for galloping on all fours over too great a distance. He rises up and straightens his back as we gaze out at the placid landscape.

  Deep in the valley at the foot of the hill far below us huddles Clairvallon. Soon enough, hysterical tales of the monster that terrorized the chevalier’s wedding will be all over the town. Whatever townsfolk did not witness our flight to freedom will be infected with all the same fears and prejudices as those we’ve just left shut up at the château. They must all be pressed against the gilded gate, shouting and cursing now that the danger is well past; their harsh human noise still echoes down the green hillside to us.

  But we turn our backs on the din and set off down the dusty track that skirts the outer edges of the Beaumont grounds. The spring rains have given way to green summer. Insects hum lazily in the tall grasses, and untended wildflowers sway in the light breeze as we double back along the outskirts of the park well behind the château. We stop often to listen to the exuberant song of a mockingbird or watch the drunken path of an orange-and-yellow butterfly skittering playfully along in the air. Once Beast freezes in place so as not to fright a small brown hare nibbling at a shoot of greenery. The little creature freezes, too, angling its head to take us in with its large, liquid brown eye, wriggling its tiny pink nose. Then slowly, so slowly, it finishes its task, puts down its delicate front paws, and scampers silently away.

  We wander deeper below the park, where the trees grow wilder and closer together, until the tittering of birds, the rustling of busy squirrels, the murmur of leafy branches on the breeze, and the distant burbling of the river are all that can be heard.

  Beast stretches out a paw to take my hand, and I smile up at him.

  And we start down the hill into the wood. Together.

  That’s not the way folk tell the story now.

  Fearful minds invent tales to conceal what their eyes have seen, to explain away what’s too frightening to understand. Stories are whispered in the shadows, across the hearth, at the well — but never in the hearing of the magistrate or the priest, I’ll wager. They seep into the wood like the distant cooing of a dove in the velvety fog — in the idle chatter of peasant girls picking blackberries or boys fishing in the river or the ribald old goodwives from other villages who visit Mère Sophie for her potions and pos
sets.

  Some say the handsome young chevalier was bitten by an enraged beast while on a hunt, that he sickened and died of his wound. They say his body was burned in secret to prevent a vile contagion from running riot throughout the seigneurie, and that is why he was seen no more. Others whisper that his poor bereft bride was cursed for her beauty by a jealous witch who wanted the chevalier for herself and whisked him away to the fairy world. They say this prodigious witch and her animal familiar were seen flying away from the château on the wedding day.

  I might count myself defamed, or more likely flattered, by that part of the tale, if I cared anymore what others think of me. But only one other’s opinion matters to me, and he is far too sensible to worry over such idle talk.

  Beast thrives in the wood, as I thrive in my studies with Mère Sophie, learning her skills and her secrets. She would gladly have made room for us both in her enchanted home, but Beast prefers to build us a cottage of stones dug out of the riverbank, mortared with good, loamy earth. The paws that found it so awkward to manage a pen are perfectly suited to mashing up the glue of mud and twigs and waste and setting the stones in place. We thatch it over with sturdy evergreen limbs that offer concealment as well as shelter.

  Beast finds a wild climbing rose of the softest scarlet tangled up in the bramble behind our cottage. We cut back the bramble and train the rose to arch over the little plot of earth where I plant my vegetable garden. Small red buds explode along the mother plant, relishing their freedom. We hang the ring that belonged to Beast’s mother by its red ribbon on the highest branch, in her memory. Christine’s restless spirit, finally at peace, troubles me no more.

  Mère Sophie introduces me into the vast sisterhood of wisewomen who live on the outskirts of all the villages, caring for the folk. And when I am off about the fetching and gathering that she finds so tiring on her own, or the chopping, measuring, and mixing I am learning at her worktable, Beast busies himself building a hearth for the fire in our home out of leftover river rock piled up outside. It gives him such pleasure to build useful things after so many idle years imprisoned within the illusion that was Jean-Loup. He makes a bed beside the fire, lined with straw and swansdown. I creep in beside him at night, into the sheltering warmth of his body, where his soft fur and the deep, rumbling hum of his breathing give me more contentment than I have ever known.

  The woodland creatures fear him at first, sensing how he is not one of them. But Beast behaves with such deference in their presence, be they badger, buck, or butterfly, that they grow more tolerant. He hunts for our food when he must, learning again to eat meat that I have cooked, but he’s come to consider himself the caretaker of the animals. He will not countenance sportsmen in the wood hunting for amusement and drives them off. But he won’t interfere with a poor man hunting for food; that is nature’s will. And he watches over travelers in the wood who have lost their way — discreetly, from the shadows — to protect them from whatever predator, two- or four-legged, might trouble them in the night.

  Beast finds it prudent to retreat into the shadows whenever folk are about in the wood. But as time passes, those who have caught a glimpse of him spin their own tales, and these, too, find their way to us. They call him Green Man; or Pan; or Silvanus, the Horned One, lord of the animals, heart of the forest. Once in a great while, a traveler finds a striped feather that Beast has dropped in the wood. These are considered objects of rare good fortune, Mère Sophie tells us, prized by the folk. Sometimes a feather is seen woven into a necklace or a belt or hung up in a place of honor inside a cottage for protection. Now and then, we find offerings left on the little pile of river rock outside our cottage, as if it were an altar: cups of mead or cow’s milk or milled wheat, a garland of garden flowers, a joint of fresh meat in the slaughtering season. Sometimes, we find bits of brightly colored cloth, berry-dyed, that I stitch together into quilts and curtains.

  We make a place for ourselves in the wood, Beast and I, as cold and damp, dark and treacherous, and full of forbidding shadows as it often is. Here he belongs in his natural skin, free to enjoy and explore his animal power, and yet he has companionship to satisfy his humanity. He also has a purpose as useful as mine, as I partner Mère Sophie in her vital work. We have found our place in the world at last. Together, in the wood. We ask for nothing more.

  Rose stays on at Château Beaumont. The rumors and whispers filter down to us over time. Kind, beautiful, and exquisitely tragic, she is beloved by all. There are few enough who knew the chevalier before who would dare to associate him with the beast seen fleeing the château on the day of the wedding feast. Whether he was gored by a wild animal or murdered by a jealous husband, or if he simply abandoned his dewy bride, Jean-Loup is spoken of no more. The LeNoir bloodline goes no further.

  Rose is good to her servants, so they say, and they protect her with fierce loyalty. She is wise enough to leak a generous portion of the Beaumont fortune into the coffers of the cheese seller, the draper, the wine merchant, and the dressmaker, and the seigneurie falls under her administration. The folk marvel at their good fortune in the new Lady Beaumont, after the generations of LeNoir knights who ruled the region for centuries. The wheat crops, the vineyards, the orchards, and the livestock all flourish under her benevolence, and the whole of the region prospers. Only Jean-Loup’s lawyers go unpaid, his suit against the Villeneuve estate withdrawn at last. There is no longer any talk of a curse, but for those hushed fireside stories of Lady Rose’s bewitched wedding feast.

  In time, the legend of the beautiful young widow spreads far and wide throughout the country. Much is made of how sad it is that she lives all alone in such forlorn splendor. A handsome young princeling from a neighboring duchy journeys all the way to Château Beaumont to seek her out. He pays her court, and in due time, she consents to accept his suit. They marry in a wedding by all accounts as lavish as the first one, although without quite so dramatic a finale, and he sweeps her off to a palace even grander than the château. But Rose and her new prince keep Château Beaumont as their secondary estate, so all the servants remain employed and the town continues to benefit from its operation.

  As more time passes, gossip insists that the handsome prince she married with such happy results was once the same monster rumored to have haunted Château Beaumont in the dark times. They say it was the purity of Rose’s love that redeemed him.

  That’s the sort of story folk love — a clear moral, a happy ending. It comforts them to think the barriers between virtue and evil, love and hate, beauty and beast, are so clearly defined. The tempest of emotions that roils in our hearts every day, the struggle that never ends to master the monsters within, to love, to live, to survive — those stories are not so comforting, nor so easily told. Happily ever after takes hard work, but folk don’t like to hear about that.

  The heart is a dark wood — dangerous, compelling, and profound. Its pathways can be frightening, but only by plunging into its depths are we fully alive.

  The heart revels in its mysteries. Defy them at your peril. Embrace them if you dare. That is where magic begins.

  Who doesn’t love Beauty and the Beast? It’s irresistible, the tale of the tragic Beast and the brave girl who sees through the outer monster to the noble soul within.

  But the moment that all thinking women dread is the climax when the marvelous Beast transforms back into the bland, handsome prince. Indeed, when the actress Greta Garbo saw Jean Cocteau’s excellent 1946 film, La Belle et la Bête, it’s reported that her response at the end was: “Give me back my Beast!”

  Readers who love the classic fairy tale expect the restored prince to be the hero and Beast to be the spell that needs undoing. But, like Ms. Garbo, I never found that story satisfying. It’s Beast, after all, who earns Beauty’s love, not the prince.

  So why is it the prince who gets the “reward” of Beauty’s love? And why is Beauty so ready to forget the Beast she says she loves and marry the prince? Doesn’t Beast himself deserve to be the hero
?

  As someone who’s always loved Beast more than the prince, I thought: wouldn’t it be more interesting if there was another woman involved, one who wants to preserve Beast and make sure the prince never returns? So, in my version, there is a good reason the young chevalier is transformed into Beast: his handsome face conceals an evil and corrupted nature. And no one knows it better than my heroine, Lucie.

  My story includes all the elements of the traditional fairy tale, but it begins earlier and ends sometime after “happily ever after.” But it’s Lucie’s story I wanted to tell. My heroine is willing to sacrifice her own humanity to pursue her revenge against the prince — until she discovers that Beast is someone entirely separate, with a heart far more human than the prince’s ever was.

  How would she feel when Beauty arrives on the scene, with the power to restore the prince and banish Beast forever?

  As much as Beast deserves to be the hero in my book, I wanted to create, in Lucie, a heroine openhearted enough to care for Beast just the way he is — and strong enough to fight to preserve him. In Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, they both deserve a happy ending.

  Thanks to my wonderful editor, Kaylan Adair, for all the tough love, helping me make this the best Beast he can be.

  Thanks to my agent, Irene Goodman, the first one to fall in love with Beast.

  And, as always, thanks to James for being my touchstone through all the strange enchantments of a writer’s life.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.