by Cameron Jace
“I noticed you like music,” I offered. “Some ballroom music, I presume. It really helps me to sleep at night.”
She nodded, kneeling down next to me. Suddenly, I was talking to a pet, which also had the power to chop off my head.
“You like to dance?” I asked, not expecting her to say yes, but she shook her head with approval. She clapped her hands and the music started to play in the castle. I noticed that things didn’t die or turn into ashes around her when she was close to me. Well, a couple of plants still died nearby, but the effect had lessened.
She pulled me up and held me closer and we started to dance…
I didn’t say a word, but she was a good dancer – a little too powerful in her moves, though. I had to make an effort so I didn’t end up under her feet, squashed like the frog she had just devoured.
The more we danced in the vast castle, the more her face eased, still disfigured and ugly, but with some kind of a happy soul shining through.
We kept dancing and dancing until I got exhausted. I couldn’t fake being a happy prisoner any longer, and had to ask her to stop dancing.
I ended up punished and chained to my bed again. The Beast’s rage was overwhelming, and I started to think that it wasn’t a good idea anymore to try to tame the Beast.
To make things worse, the girl in my dreams disappeared. She didn’t show up when I slept. Was that it? She just showed me how to do it, and I couldn’t discuss it with her again?
The next day, I made sure to say, ‘Good morning’ to Villeneuve, and call her by her name, which she still liked. I had practiced my broad smile all night so she couldn’t interpret it as fake. I was a beautiful boy; a girl had cut her finger accidentally once when looking at me, so it wasn’t that hard to seduce the beast.
I was amazed by her girly attitude, sitting upright in the chair. She had combed her stiffened hair that looked once like a broom’s. Well, she combed it in her own fashion, and she wore a pink dress. She had even brought a fork and a knife to chop off something in her plate. We both knew she wasn’t eating pancakes. It was a rat. I imagined that she thought it would be less disgusting for me. She had cooked it in a good manner, though, made to look like meat.
Then something stranger happened…
“Good morning to you too,” she said in an awful, beastly voice, but I knew her intentions were good so I imagined birds humming to me in my ears.
“You can talk?” I wondered.
“I was afraid that when you heard my voice, you’d not like me,” She said.
“Oh,” I almost choked on my food. I didn’t know why I imagined her insisting on letting me taste part of her rat at that moment, but that never happened.
“I know that I have a terrible voice, but it’s my voice.”
It wasn’t terrible. It was horrible, as if made of the sum of all children’s nightmares; as if it was an ensemble of creaking doors, donkey voices, and croaking frogs. I couldn’t tell her that. Nor could I tell that her voice was so sweet I wondered why she never sang to me. She would know I was lying. Sometimes silence was the best way out of situations like these.
“You really should’ve let me hear your voice a long time ago,” I said. “We’re closer now. We should know everything about each other.”
She blushed… in her own beastly way.
We spent the following days between dancing, talking, and getting to know each other. One thing she refused to talk about was who she was or where she came from, and she definitely hated anything that had to do with mirrors, even if it was a fairy tale.
Occasionally, she let me watch my mother through the mirror, but while leaving the door open so I couldn’t talk to the to it privately. What mattered was that my mother was doing great, healed, becoming healthier and better every day. Little did my mother know that she’d become immortal, and it tore my heart whenever I watched her pray the lord to bring me back. She still believed that I was alive. I was looking forward for the day I got back to her and told about my beastly, yet magical, journey.
The beast began to let me sleep unchained. She even offered to sleep next to me, but I persuaded her that wouldn’t have been appropriate before marriage. It made her even happier.
Then one day, she showed me to a secret library in the castle. It was huge, but strange indeed. Wherever I stood, I saw shelves stacked with an infinite amount of books, but if I changed my place and stood elsewhere, I saw different shelves with different books. It was as if the library was a huge maze. To get what you want, you needed to know where to stand. A puzzle of placements and orientation. The situation reminded me of what the girl in my dreams had said. The castle was an evil place unbound with time or place. It was East of the Sun and West of the Moon, wasn’t it?
“I thought I’d show you the library since I’ve seen you like books,” she said. “I am sure you will read all the fairy tales you like here. Consider it my wedding present for you.”
“But this is crazy, how can I find what I’m looking for? I could waste my life in here without knowing it, discovering those invisible shelves.”
“I know,” Villeneuve nodded. “I love books. I spent my life reading in here.”
Even the Beast was a bookworm like me. At this point, I was still resisting the idea that I grew to like her a lot. The dances, her shyness, and being an avid reader; it made her bestiality irrelevant at times. I didn’t know how to explain that feeling, connecting with someone on a basis beyond our looks, or where we come from. But then again, I was raised on books, and they shaped my adolescence before I was thrown into the sea. Books that allowed me to live in faraway places, pretending to be a hero in a fairy land, all this while I was still in my place, staring into the pages.
But no, she’s still a beast, and I am too beautiful to end up with her. Too damn beautiful.
Suddenly, I remembered what the girl in my dreams had said, ‘Things must be loved before they are lovely.’. I still didn’t know what this meant, although I began to have an idea, and I didn’t like it.
“I like books, too,” I said. “I might spend some time in the library, if you don’t mind.”
“I’m glad you like it, but I have to warn you,” She said.
“Of what?”
“There is this girl,” Villeneuve sounded hesitant. “She looks beautiful, but she is not to be trusted.”
“What girl?”
“She lives here in the castle. She might be a ghost, but I’m not sure. She loves this library. If you see her, you better leave immediately.” She said, and I couldn’t help but think about the girl in my dreams.
“She is a bad girl,” Villeneuve insisted. “Don’t be fooled by her beauty, and never do what she says.”
When I wanted Villeneuve to elaborate, she refused and looked angered again. I didn’t push it. I couldn’t risk her not trusting me. I thought I was so close to ask her to let me go. Although she had warned me of that girl, I believed the girl in my dream had helped me a lot. I did change, didn’t I? I did see through Villeneuve’s skin of bestiality and let her show me the beauty in the beast whose skin she lived in. My imprisonment in the castle wasn’t horrifying anymore. I wasn’t scared of the beast. We made peace. If I still wanted to leave, then it was only for one reason; I felt out of place. I wanted to see the world outside, see my mother and tell her that I was still alive, and sail back in the sea. I wanted to have chances, to try and to fail, and chose what I want to be or do on my own will in the end.
As much as I understood the Beast, I was still determined to leave, and that was when I asked her to let me go…
The rage that possessed her was darker and fiercer than anything I had seen before. She lost the shining in her eye to a miserable dark, like a spoiled child with evil powers, about to torment me to death. Every plant around us died as the library shook like in earthquakes, books flying in the air everywhere.
I ran away, lost in the maze of the library, then hid in the darkest corner I found as she called angrily for me. It d
idn’t look like she was going to hurt me and chain me to the bed. Her anger was blinding so I thought she was going to kill me.
A couple of books fell next to me, and I couldn’t help but notice they were all books about beauties and beasts from every corner in history, fairy tales, and fables. I couldn’t read all the titles, as the light was feeble in my hideout, but I read the title of The Phantom of the Opera, where a girl loved a ghost; Cupid and Psyche; the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the East of the Sun West of the Moon where the beast was a prince disguised as a bear. I remembered this story now. I had read it when I was a kid but just forgot about it. That’s why the castle’s evil address was East of the Sun West of the Moon. All these stories were about the love between a beauty and a beast. Were all other books the same? Did she spend her time reading just about forbidden romances between beauties and beasts? Was that why she had the idea of trapping me inside, and never thought of trapping any of the locals who had threatened to burn her? She trapped me because I was beautiful, and expected me to fall in love with her?
I lost my temper and started pulling books from the shelves, and reading their titles as my thoughts wandered; most of the beasts where men in these stories I had mentioned. My situation was quite different. I wondered if this meant anything.
Then I came about a book called the Beauty and the Beast. Upon opening it, I found out that its pages were empty, and they dissolved and poured like sand through my hands. I opened every book with the same title, ‘The Beauty and the Beast’ and the same thing happened. The books where empty.
What did that mean?
But I had no time to understand. Villeneuve, the beast, was about to find me in the maze of the library. I ran and ran in the dark and endless corridors of the library until I glimpsed a golden, thin ray of light, peeking from under a small door. I open it, entered, and locked it behind me.
Looking around, I discovered I was back in the room with the mirror again, having only entered from a different door. I ran to the mirror and asked it, hoping it would reply and advise me what to do. The beast was pounding on the door outside.
“Mirror!” I said. “What should I do? She is going to kill me.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Villeneuve screamed behind the door, crying and sounding regretful. I didn’t know if she was trying to trick me, but she had never tricked me before. She’d been mad and angry but had never been manipulative. “Don’t listen to the mirror, or the girl. Please!” Villeneuve pleaded.
“I can help you,” the girl in the mirror said. “You can kill her easily. All you have to is to make her see her reflection in the mirror. Why do you think there are no mirrors in the castle?”
I didn’t have time to read between the lines or ask why a mirror would kill her. Villeneuve was already breaking through the walls, and I had no choice but to try my luck with the mirror. I pulled the tall mirror and turned it to face Villeneuve so it was the first thing she bumped into once she entered.
It worked.
Villeneuve screamed when she saw her reflection in the mirror.
“Why?” She said. “The girl and the mirror fooled you. I didn’t want this to happen.”
Villeneuve didn’t die, or get hurt, looking in the mirror. She just got down on her knees and kept crying. I had to turn and see what her reflection in the mirror looked like. What I saw was beyond belief.
Villeneuve had turned into the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She turned into the lovely, fabulous looking girl in the pink dress I saw in my dreams.
Puzzled, I turned around, looking at the real Villeneuve. She had transformed from a beast to the girl in my dreams.
“Are you happy now?” Villeneuve said to me.
“What do you mean?” I asked. What was going on? “Why didn’t you tell me you were the girl in my dreams? Why did you warn me of her if she was you?”
“It wasn’t me. She only looked like me, planted in your dream by this evil mirror.”
“What?” When I looked back at the mirror, it had turned black again.
“It’s a curse by this castle I live in,” Villeneuve explained. “It’s an enchanted evil castle, controlled by the Queen of Sorrow. She sent me here after she wasn’t able to take what she wanted from me in her castle. She sent me here to punish me in this cursed castle,” It seemed like there was no time for me to learn what had happened in the Queen’s bathtub chamber. “The castle has a soul of its own, and many of the famous stories you read in books happened here,” Villeneuve was crying hysterically. “Every beauty and the beast story happened in this castle.”
“You mean all the books in the library are only describing things that happened here? Cupid and Psyche, the Phantom of the Opera, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame? This is absurd.”
“The castle takes all shapes and forms. It lives in different countries in different times. Sometimes, it lives in people’s dreams. It has to be fed to stay alive. It’s cursed. Can’t you understand? The castle is the true beast!”
“And what does this have to do with you? With me?”
“In order for the Castle to survive, it needs to capture a soul. A beauty and turn it into a beast. It’s what it feeds on. It seduces a traveler and turns it into a beast, and it’s fueled with its victim’s pain. It’s done this before for thousands of years with those you read about in the books. The Queen knew this and punished me in here, knowing that the castle will never give up on me unless…” Villeneuve gazed at me with more tears in her eyes.
“Unless what?”
“Unlessl I am loved by someone,” She said, sobbing. “That’s what I was hoping you would do. Love me for who I am, and then we both would be free. ‘Things must be loved before they are lovely.’ It’s the phrase that breaks the curse.”
“But I—“ I was tongue tied.
“But you didn’t love me, I know,” Villeneuve said. “Even when I tried my best to let you love me. It could have happened, if you only didn’t ask to leave me. I couldn’t control my anger in the beast form.”
“So why did the castle trick me into taming you and then asking you to let me go?” I asked, still holding the mirror in my hands.
“Because the mirror is part of the castle. It’s evil, possessed by a girl called Mary,” Villeneuve explained. “She tricked you because she knew if you gave me hope and then asked me, my anger will be fierce and then the beast inside me would hurt you more and you’d never ever love me. This way, I’d never ever leave the castle.”
“And why did you regain your real looks now?”
“I don’t think the castle planned this, but it’s because you made me look in the mirror. Part of the curse was that the person who insisted I looked in the mirror…” Villeneuve shrugged. She was talking about me now.
“What? What happens to the person who insisted in making you look in the mirror?”
“He’d take my place,” Villeneuve said with moisten eyes. “Especially when they’re beautiful.”
“What?”
“Look in the mirror, go see for yourself,” She said.
I looked, and then I let the mirror fall and splinter into pieces. It was better that way, than to look at my horrible, beastly new look. I was cursed instead of Villeneuve.
“If you only were able to love me,” Villeneuve said, standing up. “None of this would have happened.”
“Where are you going?” I said with tears in my eyes.
“I have to leave as long as the castle’s doors are open for me. They will only let me out. The castle has a new beast. You! I am so sorry,” Villeneuve ran to open the door but I yelled at her.
“Will you come visit me, then? I know I am cursed and don’t know what to do about it, but will you at least come visit the beast? We danced together, remember? I was so close to loving you.” I screamed.
“But you didn’t,” Villeneuve said. “I was going to wait for you forever until you did, but you didn’t. Besides, I can’t visit you any more.”
“Why?”
> “I know that I won’t remember any of this once I go back home to my family. I will forget all of this after the first night I sleep and have ordinary dreams.”
Villeneuve left me, and I became the new beast for the castle.
It would be silly of me if I told you of my time in the castle after that, learning its timeless secrets, and spending my loneliness among more and more books. All I can tell you is that I have left a lot untold in this story, including names and dates for reasons you should not hear from me.
Within time, I had accepted my fate with all the weirdness of the tale and what happened to me, but one thing always bothered me when I entered the library. It was that the books titled The Beauty and the Beast were still only sand. They were the only empty books in the library. I had always thought that they were empty because my story with Villeneuve hadn’t reached a conclusion by then. But if that was the case, why weren’t they written yet?
Like many other things in our life, I forgot about the matter as time tick-tocked away.
What mattered the most was that after a while I understood how the lovely girl called Villeneuve not only looked like a beast, but acted like a beast when she was cursed, because the same thing happened to me.
In the beginning, I was only wearing the carcass of a beast as a my skin, and I thought if I waited long enough, fate should bring a girl my way, and I would invite her in the castle and make her love me like Villeneuve tried with me. This time, I was going to be patient, caring, treat her well, and show her that, ‘Things must be loved before they are lovely’. I’d would resist my beastly nature. Then we would both be free, and I’d be the first to survive the castle’s curse.
But the beast wasn’t just a carcass. It took over my soul, heartbeat by heartbeat, until I didn’t recognize my old heart anymore.
The beast in me led me to find a book of dark arts and enchantments in the library. There were ways to control another’s heart and fate in the book. I used it with a crystal ball to bring a girl to me in my castle. I created a bad luck charm for her father, who was a merchant, so that he went poor and lost all his money. Then I cursed him with a spell that sent him to the sea like me, and let him survive the shipwreck and arrive on an island that sent him to a road where he could read a sign called, ‘East of the Sun West of the Moon’. At this point, my castle appeared in front of him. He entered it, ate, and found a red flower outside, but didn’t know of its real purpose. He had only picked it up because his daughter had dreamed of it.