Mrs. Beast

by Pamela Ditchoff

  Croesus perks up his ears and wags his tail.

  "And may I remind you that this isn't Kansas, Toto." Elora raises an arm to the sky, snaps her fingers and a winged monkey soars toward Croesus, who dashes from the poppy bed like a greyhound out of the gate.

  * * *

  Beauty wants to open her eyes, but her lids won't cooperate. She has better luck with raising her eyebrows, which pull her lids up sufficiently for her to see a frog big as a beaver staring at her with googly eyes. The frog croaks, "How-dee-do," and smacks his lips into an open-mouthed grin.

  "Where am I?" Beauty mumbles thickly.

  "In a grotto underneath the Castle of Dreams," the frog answers.

  "A cave?" Beauty asks, and tries to lift her head from the mattress, but it seems heavy as a stone.

  "No, no, a grot-toe, a place of repose and reunion, of solitude, seclusion, and shade; a sanctuary of muses and an abode of nymphs; a locus of enlightenment and poetic inspiration; a metaphor of the cosmos. It's the only place where the air isn't laced with poppy dust. I knew at a glance that you're carrying a tadpole, so I brought you here. Fergus is my name."

  "Beauty is mine. How long have I slept?"

  "Three days," the frog answers.

  Beauty throws off the horsehair blanket and rubs her face. "I must be on my way."

  "No, no, you mustn’t go. It's harvest time, Dearie-doo. The flower will get in your blood and poison your tadpole. Princess Rosamond will visit you at sundown." Fergus croaks and hops through a vaulted passageway, up six steps and disappears from view.

  Beauty sits upright, her head spins, she dry heaves, and then collapses on the mattress with a moan and falls asleep.

  * * *

  "Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me," an ethereal voice enters Beauty's ear, and with a start, she realizes the breath of the singer is falling on her cheek. She quickly stands and hears footfalls scurry, and the strike of a match.

  One by one, seven sconces are lit and the grotto is bathed in candlelight. Beauty sees a woman dressed in ragged overalls, her pockets sagging with garden tools. Her hands are mud-stained, and her feet are bare. She's small boned, but her legs are long and her shoulders are broad. Her vermilion hair hugs her scalp like a cap of cardinal feathers, sharply contrasting skin as thin and white as eggshell. "I am Princess Rosamond," she says in the ethereal voice of the singer.

  Rosamond walks toward Beauty with tentative, dodging steps, turning her head from side to side. The tips of her ears and her chin are delicately pointed. Rosamond lifts her long lashes, revealing eyes the hue of watercolor violets. "You are Beauty, Fergus told me. Do you dance? I found a boar skin bag at the southern edge of the field."

  "My satchel?"

  "I placed it beside the table. Your dress is perfectly delightful; I can smell its flowers. I can dance in my blue dress. I must change for dinner." Rosamond skitters down the passageway, leaving Beauty baffled and a bit nervous. She takes one step and her foot slides like a skater's on ice. Looking closely, she sees the floor's stones are slick with age and damp.

  Beauty removes her boar skin shoes and cautiously walks toward one of the sconces, dodging cobwebs that drape like curtains from the grotto ceiling. She lifts a candle and wanders through the cave. As she moves, it appears that the walls are alive; her body reflects aqueous shadows over walls embedded with once elaborate mosaics and arabesque patterns fashioned from sea shells, mother of pearl, coral, and shards of colored glass, now eroded by weather, moss, and neglect.

  At the rear of the grotto she finds a pond fed by an underground bubbling stream. In an alcove above the pond is a reclining marble maiden. Beauty reads the words carved in the statue's base:

  Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep, And to the murmur of these waters sleep; Ah, spare my slumbers gently tread the cave, And drink in silence, or in silence lave.

  Beauty kneels, cups her hands and gratefully drinks the cold, clear water. She splashes her face and her baby wave its tiny fingers. Beauty coos, "Hello to you too, little sleeper."

  Revived and hungry, Beauty looks for the table. She spots her satchel on the floor next to a giant tree stump, on which two seats have been scooped from the wood. She lowers herself into one of the hollows, the wood creaks and wobbles beneath her. The table is set with three bowls of unidentifiable food, two gold plates and two gold spoons. She eyes the mush suspiciously and decides it's best to wait for Rosamond to return.

  A half hour passes before Beauty wonders why she's sitting in this damp, decaying cave when she should be past Charmed Kingdom by now. Why should she take the word of a big talking frog? She grabs her satchel, rises from the table, and begins her ascent up the passageway to the surface. A few steps upward and the acrid odor stings Beauty’s throat. She turns back and her stomach growls with hunger. She can wait no longer for the princess; she dips her spoon into one of the bowls.

  Suddenly, Rosamond appears at the top of the stairs. Despite Beauty's training, she holds the spoon in mid-air and gapes. My goodness, she's a schooner at full sail.

  Rosamond teeters sideways through the passageway because the whalebone form beneath her dress extends her hips to three feet in width. Beauty can see numerous moth holes in the once lustrous, once aquamarine, satin material. The silk roses encircling her wrists and her bodice droop their crushed, humiliated heads. Lace overlay on the sleeves trail like old wallpaper. To top it off, Rosamond wears a white wig of astounding proportion: a good two feet in height, its curlicues are tucked around shells of every shape and color. She carries a porcelain tea service, which she carefully sets on the table. When she plunks into the seat, the whalebone extensions fold like an umbrella in a tempest and knock her wig askew. Rosamond rights the hair and dips her spoon into a bowl of pureed prunes.

  "I crave sugar. Sweets for the sweet." Rosamond dips her spoon into the bowl of pureed prunes. "Sweetness is one of the gifts I received from the twelve Wise Women. Fergus told me you're expecting a child. Why are you here?" Rosamond pulls a loaf of brown bread from her bodice and a sickle shaped knife from her pocket.

  Beauty blinks three times before answering. "I'm on a quest to Glass Mountain to restore my husband to the man he was when I first came to love him. My baby will be born in September. I need to complete my quest before then."

  "You happened upon us during harvest. I will be occupied from sun up to sundown. Three weeks to finish milking the poppy pods, then you can safely take your leave." Rosamond cuts through the bread with her knife and slices the tip of her finger. The blood trickles down as she lifts the bread to her mouth.

  "Rosamond—“ Beauty points, “your finger is bleeding."

  Rosamond rips a trailing piece of material from her sleeve and wraps it around her finger. "There are five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two pieces of glass in this grotto."

  That familiar uneasiness slithers over Beauty's ribs. Three weeks! Whatever will I do alone in this cave for three weeks? Why is it the flowers make me ill, but Rosamond walks freely among them?

  "Rosamond, poppies grew in my father's garden and they caused no ill effects."

  "Ah, but these are not your garden variety poppies. Magic poppies, papaver somniferum; the source of opium. I would be sick without them. A pity you cannot partake of this poppy tea. It soothes the nerves; a flower in the blood." Rosamond coughs so harshly the wig falls into her lap. "Care for a piece of bread?"

  Beauty shakes her head.

  "This wig, dress and grotto belonged to my mother, Princess Marina. She used her dowry to decorate these walls. Before I was born, she passed her time here, wishing for a child and waiting for Father to return from kingly duties." Rosamond's eyes water and she rubs her nose roughly, sniffs and coughs. "She's dead."

  "I'm so sorry." Beauty's eyes tear in sympathy, for the poor mad princess and for herself.

  "My father is dead also," Rosamond says and eats a spoonful of applesauce. "The origin of the phrase, a nine days' wonder lies in the fact that kittens and puppies
are blind for the first nine days of their lives. During this time they live in a wondrous world of their own, all instinctual. After nine days, their eyes open and everything visible becomes ordinary."

  "Is that so?" Beauty asks, wondering how one is supposed to respond to such a statement out of the blue. "Your mother must have waited a long time for her wish to come true."

  "Many years. Then one day as she was affixing shells, she stopped to drink from the pool. She cried, Would that we had a child, and Fergus climbed out of the water. He said, Before a year has passed, you will bring a daughter into the world. And she did.

  “When I was born, father ordained a great feast. Not only did he invite his relations, friends, and acquaintances, but also the Wise Women, that they might be favorable to me. There were thirteen wise women, but as Father had only twelve golden plates, one of them had to be left out." Rosamond's nose begins to run, and she sniffs and coughs.

  "Can I get you some water?"

  "No, thank you. From my cup I sip a swallow of sunlight, intoxicating and illuminating." Rosamond pours the tea, her hands trembling. The steaming liquid splashes over her hand and she drinks until the cup is dry.

  Good gracious, can she be alive? Is she an illusion, a ghost? Did the opium effect my senses or am I still dreaming?

  "As the feast drew to an end, twelve wise women came forward to present me with gifts: beauty, riches, sweetness, modesty, faith, cleverness, hope, fortitude, meekness, prudence, charity, and charm. After the twelfth spoke, in came the uninvited thirteenth wise woman in a rage. She cried out, In the fifteenth year of her age the princess shall prick herself with a spindle and shall fall down dead. Without speaking one more word, she turned away and left the hall. Everyone was sitting terrified and silent when they heard a voice shout, Bricklebrit."

  "Bricklebrit?" Beauty gasps. "Who was she? Did she wear something red on her head?"

  Rosamond cocks her head and squints at Beauty. "Yes, a red wimple. She said further, The princess shall not die, but fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years."

  "Did you prick yourself and sleep for a hundred years?"

  Rosamond pours another cup of tea. "Hul gil, the joy plant, is what the Sumerians call opium. To the contrary, it makes one calm and indolent." Rosamond's chin drops to her chest, her cup slips from her grasp and shatters on the floor.

  * * *

  "Cocteau claimed it took opium to produce his La Belle et la bete; said it was like walking through silk." Elora snaps off her crystal ball and fastens Croesus' lead to his collar.

  "Yeah, right, like he didn't wake in the middle of the night with screaming meemies. Come on, once around the palace, then off to bed. My day was exhausting. I turned a smug tailor's wife into a goose, married a spider to a flea, changed Lazy Harry's hammock from hemp to poison ivy."

  Elora and Croesus gracefully glide into the June evening, past the white lilacs, past the beds of trillium and lily-of-the-valley until Croesus pauses to lift his leg on a pink crystal flamingo.

  "I am not pleased, Croesus, not at all pleased with the progression of Rosamond's tale. My girl Rosa could use a stint at Betty Ford. Too bad the only therapy in Grimm Land is the Grimm psychologist. He says Rosamond's story teaches girls not to be afraid of passivity." Elora sucks her teeth in disgust.

  "Because despite her parents attempts to prevent sexual awakening, symbolized by the shedding of blood after pricking her finger, it happened. This is further reinforced, he claims, by thirteen wise women, representing the thirteen lunar months, which correspond to the menstrual cycle. Bullshit and Bricklebrit! Croesus spits out three gold coins and bays at the moon.

  "According to that psycho-shrink, rather than face puberty, Rosamond chose a comatose snooze." Elora snaps the leash, and Croesus follows her long-legged strides through the clematis arbor.

  "He says Rosamond serves to warn girls that failure to accept womanhood makes for a living death. Only through acceptance of the male, who awakens her from sleep, will she mature and take her proper place in society as wife and mother. Yeah, like Rosamond's responsible for her father throwing a bash and inviting only twelve wise women because he wouldn't pop for a lousy thirteenth plate. As if she's responsible for the supposed gifts they bestowed on her. Let's make her beautiful, sweet, and charming, then screw her up with modesty. Let's give her faith and hope so she'll unquestionably expect goodness and make her clever enough to know it won't fall in her lap. We'll give her riches, but make her prudent and charitable. And let's give her fortitude on top of meekness. Give me a break! If she hadn't fallen asleep, she would have had more personalities than Sybil."

  Croesus growls at an owl perched overhead in a red bud tree.

  "Pissed me off. Pulling a stunt like that and not checking with me first. The wise women aren't hackers like Gothel. I couldn't reverse their spells, but I could and did mess with them."

  Arriving back at the palace front entrance, Croesus looks up at Elora expectantly. Her fine black eyebrows are raised in a ruminative arch.

  "I figured a hundred years would be enough, that by then the gifts would be neutralized through the passage of time. And they were. None but Prince Fitzgerald and his politically correct, covertly ambitious, casually superior family could have made Rosamond feel inadequate for becoming, during her century-long sleep, nearly as ordinary as your average Grimm girl."

  * * *

  Beauty's Diary

  6 June Page Forty

  Five days have passed since I entered the Kingdom of Dreams to find yet another obstacle thrown on the path of my quest. Are the fates working against me? Is this a test of my dedication and devotion? I pray I can endure two more weeks in this dank cell.

  Princess Rosamond is the most eccentric person I have met. I wonder to what degree her madness is shaped by opium and isolation. She may well have slept for a hundred years, but I've slept little during the day, and rarely at night. After I fell asleep on the night of our first meeting, I woke to Rosamond screaming, Get it off, as she ran from the grotto. For the rest of the evening, I heard her either laughing hysterically or shrieking in the castle above me.

  Last night, all was quiet, and sleep overtook me. Brightness and heat quickly roused me, for Rosamond had entered the grotto with a torch, knelt beside me, and set the

  Page Forty-one

  mattress afire. I don't believe she did so purposely; she rushed to the pool and quickly doused the fire. She said she'd come to ask an important question, but now it was forgotten. Rosamond is lost to the real world, careless, beyond reason and suffering in the world of her own making.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Briar Rose

  Beauty closes her diary as Rosamond enters the grotto with sheepish steps, dressed in her faded overalls. "I have forgotten how it is to live among people. Words move in shadows and disturb the even pulse," she murmurs staring at the candle's flame. "If you stare at an object long enough it will give up its story."

  Beauty watches Rosamond stare at the candle and sees the face of the child emerge, a child she believes lay her cheek on a soft pillow at twilight, never questioning the permanence of her contentment. Beauty closes the diary and moves the candle out of Rosamond's reach. "Since we last spoke, I've been wondering about the thirteen wise women . . ."

  "Should I?" Rosamond interrupts, "venture down the mint-hemmed paths of childhood with nary a thorn in sight?" She sinks into the seat opposite Beauty.

  "Father commanded every spindle in the kingdom should be burnt, to keep the prophecy from coming true. I grew up endowed with the qualities bestowed by the wise women. No one who met me could help loving me."

  "How terrible for you," Beauty says.

  Rosamond grins ruefully. "In my fifteenth year, my parents first left me on my own in the castle. I wandered about until I came to a winding tower stair I had never before seen. I climbed up and turned the key to a small door.

  "What was on the other side of the door?" Beauty asks.

  "
An old woman with a spindle spinning flax. I said, Good day, mother. What are you doing? I am spinning, said she. I asked, What thing is that which twists round so briskly? See for yourself, princess, said she. I took the spindle into my hand, pricked my finger and fell deep asleep. Sleep fell upon the whole castle: the entire court, the bakers and cooks in the kitchen, the servants upstairs and downstairs, the groomsmen and gamesmen and my parent's in the Great Hall. The wind ceased, not a leaf stirred, and thorns sprung from the ground."

  "The whole kingdom slept for a hundred years?" Beauty asks.

  Rosamond turns her head and launches into a coughing spasm.

  "Are you ill?" Beauty asks fretfully.

  Rosamond shakes her head. "A thousand thorns in my throat." She takes a small brown ball from her breast pocket and throws it to the back of her mouth.

  "The thorns grew thicker and taller every year until the castle was hidden from view. At the end of the hundredth year, Prince Fitzgerald rode into this country. Because the time had come for me to be awakened, the thorns changed to honeysuckle, which parted to let him pass."

  Rosamond yawns, scratches her left ear, and her eyelids flutter. Beauty urges, "He found you in the tower?"

  "He climbed the winding stair, opened the door, and he stooped to kiss me. I awoke and we went down together to find the kingdom had awakened from its hundred-year sleep."

  Rosamond rises from the chair and wanders toward the passageway. "We were married with all splendor and celebration the next day. I am a red stone, I own no other title," her voice drones back to Beauty. "I dream only to harden the dreams of my choosing."