by Cameron Jace
I had to step up, bury my alchemy dreams, and grow up into a man and sail away to save the day.
I was told that there was one last sail I had to make on my father’s behalf – a first sail for me, though. My father had planned the voyage before his death, and wrote in his own diary which he kept in the safely of my mother’s hands. I followed the instructions and let them build the ship he had designed in the diary, and sought for the best sailors left to decipher the map I had found with the diary, explaining our destination. The map pointed to a place called was considered a myth. Sailors loved to call it Neverland because no one ever found it. It was a region only my father knew about, or at least believed in. In his diary, he said that I could save my family, and the kingdom, if I brought the finest food and merchandise from Neverland, and traded it with neighboring kingdoms. I was supposed to look for a boy called Peter Pan once I got there.
I packed all my books, brought them aboard, and sailed with a newly trained crew. The sea wasn’t an easy place to be. I got sick every other day, and I couldn’t read my books. It wasn’t too bad, though. I just had to be strong until I reached our destination.
We never reached Neverland.
A pirate ship named Jolly Roger attacked us, led by a man with a hook instead of a hand. They hijacked us and threatened to kill us if we disobeyed him and refused to be enslaved.
Abandoning my books, I escaped, swimming away, six days and seven nights on a log in the sea until I reached a shore.
Lost and hungry, I walked through endless forests with no one in sight, until I saw a sign, carved in wood. It said:
Welcome to the castle East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
Things must be loved before they are lovely.
There was a castle right in front of me, in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t know whether I had missed seeing it while approaching or if it just appeared out of nowhere.
The castle almost called to me, as if it had a soul or knew me from long ago, before I was even born, and even before the world was born. On my knees, I pounded on its enormous gate and shouted through its bars, asking if there was anyone there to help me before I starved to death – I had only saved one book from the ship, and the stories about the Forbidden Rose in it kept me company when I was hungry. I admit that I was about to literary chew on some pages on my way, cannibalizing on words that had only been written once. But I had steered away from the thought because I believed that the origins of things had to be kept intact.
I looked at the gates of the castle as they squeaked open on their own.
Did the castle decide I was worthy of saving? Or torturing? I didn’t know. Hunger blinded my judgment as I stepped into the echoing halls of the unknown.
This was when my real story – a fairy tale to you – began.
Although the castle looked old and abandoned from the outside, it shone like a golden treasure from the inside. Everything I saw, glittered; everything I heard, echoed; and everything I touched, I smeared with dirt, for my hands were not clean enough, having had a long journey.
“Hello?” I called out, craning my neck up at the chandeliers that waved slightly over my head, back and forth, as if the castle was a cradle rocked slightly by the hands of evil.
I was a beautiful boy, but never a fool to miss the menacing heart of evil drumming underneath the marble floors, hiding in the echoing walls, and crouching underneath glittering artifacts. My father had told me enough scary stories to recognize darkness when I confronted it, even in the brightest of lights. I remembered trying to sleep with my eyes open after those bedtime stories.
I had to wait and listen to my voice echoing seven times before I could call out for the castle’s inhabitants again, but then I realized that there was no need. The echo had done that on my behalf.
I noticed that there were no mirrors in the castle, and when I approached a glittering plate and lifted it to my face, it did not show my reflection. Such items had to be bewitched by evil spells that didn’t show one’s reflection. I read about them in the alchemy books, that these were only found in places inhabited by demons or evil spirits, which feared its own image.
Clutching the book in my hand, I decided I should leave, feeling frustrated, and blaming myself for being a useless young man who had lost his way in life. Neither could I find the Forbidden Rose to heal my mother in the tens of books I read, nor did I listen to my father and learn how to sail a ship before I almost died in the sea.
Was I being punished for my adolescent stubbornness? But I had always thought of myself as good. How couldn’t I when I was such a beautiful and desired boy? Didn’t beauty equal good? Was it not a cosmic rule that ugliness equaled evil?
Strangely enough that day, I didn’t leave the castle, although I should have. Something made me stay.
It wasn’t the walls that echoed, the furniture that glittered, or the faint music that hummed underneath my feet. It was the smell of food. I was starving, and the castle seduced me with the a most primitive human need.
I turned around, looking for the smell’s source. I walked on toes like a sleepwalking princess, raising my nose up, closing my eyes, and imagining the smell of fresh food dancing like an Arabian snake in front of my eyes, guiding me to Sesame, Ali Baba’s cave. I told you I read a lot, and I couldn’t help but compare stories I read to real life incidents.
I stopped at a great hall with a long table full of food, of all kinds, all colors, curving up and down like beautiful mountains in a dream. There was enough food that would last me a year. It was fresh and warm.
But I didn’t care. I dipped into the soup, sank my teeth into the meat, and drank the delicious wine.
Strangely, everything tasted of flowers somehow. Still, I didn’t care.
After I ate the delicious food – which was even better than my mom’s –, I felt heavy and sat on one of the huge gold-plated chairs, sighing and imagining myself returning home with something precious to save my fathers kingdom, something that proved I wasn’t a loser. The thought reminded me of tales I read about princesses lost in the woods after being banished by their evil stepmothers. The princesses usually ended finding a castle of some sorts where they met a prince charming who kissed them, and then the story ended – I always wanted to know what happened after that, but historians and fairy tale collectors never cared for my opinion.
But I wasn’t a princess. I was a boy. This story felt wrong to me, and I didn’t know why. There was no princess in this castle, too. It was just me with the endless food and probably some ancient ghosts waiting for me to sell my soul to them.
Something outside the castle’s windows grabbed my attention all of a sudden. It was something red, and although it was small, single, and was left alone against the windy weather outside, it stood against all odds. I jumped off my chair and ran toward it. Standing at the threshold of the castle’s main door, I saw a little creature of nature standing there. I was right. It was a Forbidden Rose. The only Forbidden Rose I had ever seen.
I checked the alchemy book in my hand and compared the picture to that of what I saw before my eyes. They matched. I shrugged in an attempt to calm myself down. I wasn’t a loser after all. I did find the rose that was going to cure my mother. All I had to do was step outside and grab it…
Unfortunately, the castle’s heavy door slammed shut before me, followed by the windows and every other opening. I wasn’t scared yet, but there was no way for me out of here. A whirling wind behind me forced me to turn around to see what caused this. It was a beast, and it was a she.
She was the most hideous creature. Looking at her deformed face, hunched shoulders, and large hairy feet, I was disgusted more than appalled. She wore an expensive dress though, but it was ripped in places to give way to the protruding parts of her irregular body. I sensed that she was younger than me, although it puzzled me how I got that impression.
She stood with her dirty-blonde hair dangling before her face. Then she parted her hair with her hands and made
way for her eyes. I noticed she wore a diamond ring on one hand. Her eyes were pitch-black like demons.
I turned back, pounding on the door, knowing that there was no one outside who could hear me. I tried to break the glass but failed. Was it under a spell? As I looked outside through the glass, I saw other plants next to the Forbidden rose acting in a strange way. They were bending awkwardly and dying on their own as if hit with an abrupt plague, but that wasn’t the case. They were dying because of the beast. Whenever she approached a living thing, it died or aged instantly. I was lucky to be still alive. Why wasn’t I affected like the plants?
Turning back, I saw that everything that glittered dimmed when she walked by, candles flickered away, and the floor underneath her turned to ashes as she set foot. I didn’t know what do. I was a beautiful boy about to be killed by a beastly girl in the middle of nowhere.
I could’ve talked to her, or begged her to spare my life, but my tongue was tied. The thought of grabbing a spell out of my book of alchemy crossed my mind, but my hands gave up on me and the book fell, thudding against the ashen floor.
Her black eyes kept staring at me, blazing with anger. Since it had taken her sometime to hurt me, I expected her to speak. How did a beast like her sound? Was her voice as scary as her look?
She approached me. I closed my eyes, unable to imagine being so close to saving my mother and yet failing.
Goodbye world. I’m a failure. I was stubborn, not listening to my father, only believing in those damn alchemy books. What use were they when they couldn’t save me from the beast that looked like it guarded the Forbidden Rose?
Suddenly, I heard distant voices approaching; men shouting and cursing outside the castle. I opened my eyes and looked outside. There were tens of them, with stakes, guns, and torches in their hands. I think they were the locals of a neighboring town. Anger shone on their faces as they approached shouting, “Come out, ugly beast!”
They were here for the beast that stood behind me. I pounded on the unbreakable window, hoping they’d hear me before she kills me.
“Come out, beast! Today is your judgment day.”
One of the older men in the gathering saw me and pointed at me. They came running, attempting to break the window, but failed, too.
Everything that the beast had sealed in the castle was unbreakable, and when she approached to show herself through the window, they swallowed hard then gritted their teeth, trying their best to stand tall, not showing fear.
Turning around again, I saw her behind me, much closer now, still staring with black eyes shining from between thick blonde hair. I noticed trickles of dried blood on the hair, and I wondered about what kind of scary face she hid underneath.
She pulled me with one hand and threw me away against a wall, then gestured with open palms for the doors to open wide and let her chasers inside through fluttering curtains. They caught the bait and came running into the castle with their torches and stakes.
A big mistake.
I didn’t know that she could levitate, not enough to fly but enough to kill and slice her enemies. She had strong hands, and she could kill with them, twisting necks and slicing through a man’s body like a knife. She was unapologetic in her killing and she was more angry than scary. It was as if she blamed them for something – as if she thought of them as beasts, too.
When she was finished with her little massacre, she threw the bodies outside onto the earth that planted the Forbidden Rose. The earth drank the men’s blood and fed the plants.
Thinking of it now, I could’ve run while the doors were open, but I still don’t know why I didn’t. Was I too paralyzed and scared, or was it that something about her made me curious?
After the doors slammed shut again, she walked toward me, her big feet heavy like trolls, clutching on the floor. She pulled me by my hair and I slid helplessly with my back against the floor. I tried to free myself but she was too strong.
Finally, she threw me into another room and started eyeing me again. It would’ve been better if she had killed me instead of bestowing her evil eyes upon me.
I watched her pulling out some animal skin and writing on its back with some darkened ink that I wished wasn’t the blood of her victims. She handed me the skin, and wanted me to read what she had written on it.
Puzzled, I took the skin and wondered if the beast was mute.
‘You were about to kill my rose,’ she wrote. ‘Why would you do that?’
I stared back at her with widened eyes, wondering why this was her biggest concern, but who was I to argue with the beast who had spared me so far?
“It’s the Forbidden Rose,” I said to her. “I need it to cure my mother.”
‘It’s precious to me, and everything thing comes with a price in this world. What would you pay for it?” She wrote on another animal skin, and I was beginning to feel safer since this had turned into a conversation instead of a bloodbath. Again, I was pleased that we were bargaining. I thought I would bargain for my life, but she spared it already without me knowing why. Did it matter why I was still alive? Of course, it didn’t. We take advantage of such things like being alive, rarely bothering if there is reason to it at all. Only if we die, or are threatened with death, do we question and whine about how all this time we wasted the gift of living.
“I’d pay anything,” I said. “It’s for my mother. If I heal her, I will not only make her happy and proud of me – and probably my father, too, in his grave – but I will make peace with myself, knowing that I wasn’t such a failure as her son.”
‘Is your mother as beautiful as you?’ The beast wrote, not mentioning the price anymore.
“Much much—“ I was enthusiastic to say more, but it occurred to me that I was talking to a beast. I didn’t want to talk to her about beauty she did not posses – far from it. “Not so much,” I lied. “She is an average woman, really,” I said, not wanting to either hurt the beast’s feeling or tickle her anger.
‘For a beautiful boy like you,’ She wrote. ‘I’d give you the rose to heal your mother if you marry me.’
I was stunned. That was straightforward – her words almost cut through me.
It was one of those times when I felt that my beauty was a curse. If I had been the kind of boy who accepted the many advances girls made in the past, it might have made sense to submit to the beast and save my mother. But I was only a beautiful boy who preferred books over girls.
‘The Forbidden Rose will not only heal your mother. It will also gift her with immortality,’ The beast wrote. At least her handwriting was beautiful.
“If that’s so, why didn’t you use it to heal yourself,” I asked, lowering my head a little so she didn’t get furious.
There was a long moment of silence, the calm before the storm, and I knew I must have insulted her.
‘The rose can’t cure me,’ The beast said. It amazed me that she confessed her bestiality being part of an illness or something. ‘My cure is almost priceless.’
I didn’t want to elaborate, asking what she was, and what it was that could cure her. The image of my mother smiling, running in green fields with two equally-long legs shaded my judgment. I decided I would do it for my mother. I would waste my beauty and youth for her, and it amazed me how it felt good. How so, when I was giving in to this horrendous beast? I experienced the enchanting feeling of sacrifice for the first time. It had that bittersweet taste. How did sacrificing yourself for someone you love bring so much joy? That wasn’t a feeling I read about in books.
I agreed to the Beast’s offer, enslaving me with her in the castle, wasting my youth, shattering my dreams of becoming what I wanted, all in the name of the vague word called ‘marriage’. I knew why the beast wanted to marry me. She wanted my beauty, even if she ended up torturing me for it. What was the most important thing a beast lacked but beauty? That’s why they always walked side by side, a beauty and a beast; one had succeeded in enslaving or taming the other.
In the coming days, I f
igured out how to postpone my agreement to marry her. She had warned me from entering any of the rooms on the first floor. Each night, I breached into one of the several rooms so she got mad at me and punished me. Thus, the marriage was postponed. Her punishment was cruel and gruesome, but sweet on my body in exchange for not marrying her. The more she punished me, the lesser I sympathized with her. Such an ugly, vicious beast I didn’t care for.
Still, she astonished me that there was a rule to her torture. She wouldn’t harm my beautiful face. The scars filled my body, though. I was her boy toy, the one her goblin father and monster mother never bought her – that’s if she had a father and mother.
At night, she chained me to a luxurious bed in a room next to her room. Although I was in no way capable of escaping the wicked castle, she’d thought that chaining me would make me marry her eventually. I tried to escape several times but I never succeeded. No door or window opened against her will, and my book of alchemy proved useless against her darkly enchanted castle. Negotiating with her was tiring as well. I wasn’t sure if she was mute, but she still never talked to me, only using animal skin to write on.
The beast had some taste for music, though; a certain kind of music that reminded me of Ballroom dancing. It was good music, aristocratic, and it filled the castle all night, humming gently out of the walls. The music helped me sleep against the pain every night.
It helped me dream…
In my dreams, a beautiful girl showed up repeatedly. She had blonde, curly locks and walked through a garden full of Forbidden Roses under a rainbow. Her curly hair fluttered to a summer breeze as she approached me with the most beautiful smile. Her beauty was so imminent it lessened the perception of my own beauty. She kept advancing toward me, and by the end of the dream, the girl whispered in my ears, “Things must be loved before they are lovely.”
Then I woke up, sweating, staring at the beast that captured me. She reminded me that there were no beautiful girls for me in this real life. It was just my mind, playing tricks on me.