Beauty in the Beast

by Christine Danse

  Miles stirred behind me and nudged me with his foot. “You haven’t told us that one before.”

  I smiled a small, tired smile. “No, I suppose I haven’t.”

  Rolph regarded me with a cocked head and a bemused expression. When our gazes met, I could tell he was not looking at Tara the storyteller or even Tara the stranger. He was looking at me, Tara the woman. “Was that one for the Frost Fair too?”

  “No.” My voice came out lower than I intended. “But I thought you might like it.”

  “It was beautiful.” Then, as if suddenly coming to, he looked away and leaned forward to stir the pot of stew. Shadows accented the muscles of his arms like a sculpture. I curled onto my side with my head pillowed on Beth’s lap and watched him, digging my fingers into the fur of the pelt beneath me. Beth stroked my hair, almost motherly, though she was ten years my junior. Funny, to watch Rolph’s well-toned arm stirring the stew. Such a domestic act. I imagined the same hand cradling the barrel of a gun or clutching a knife. I thought of those hands on my flesh, pulling clothes from my skin, separating my lips with his thumb.

  “This is a beautiful cabin,” I murmured. “Did you build it yourself?”

  “Not the entire thing, no. I added the hallway and the extra rooms. The rest was as it is now.”

  “It’s big enough for a family.” I was stupid with exhaustion and Beth’s gentle petting, so I didn’t think about my words.

  Immediately, his expression hardened into the impassable wall. He clanked the spoon against the side of the pot—a sound of finality—and turned his cool gaze to Miles. “The storm still blows. Have you a story to share?”

  Miles smiled between us, a flicker in his eyes, as if he sensed that something had just transpired. “Perhaps something light, after such a melancholy tale?”

  Rolph nodded once, a simple acknowledgement and a permission to go ahead, nothing more. The man behind the brick exterior had retreated, leaving only this cool perfunctory politeness. I cursed myself a fool.

  “All right, then. This one is known as ‘The Tommy that Loved a Woman.’”

  I groaned. “Oh, no. You said something light. Not bawdy.”

  “Oh, hush. You just told a story fit to make a man leap off a rocky cliff. Let me tell mine in peace.”

  I hid my face in Beth’s lap, scrunching my eyes shut. She patted my head, and I imagined the smile on her face.

  “What? No? Do you fear that we will wear out our welcome? All right, then. Let me see if I can think of another…

  “Ah.” He pulled off his knit cap, revealing the pale skin of his scalp and the shadow of stubble above his temples.

  Chapter Four

  “What worth has man?”

  Miles’s voice, which had trailed into little more than a mutter, boomed suddenly and struck me like a kick. I whirled to glare at him, lips curling back in a silent snarl.

  He looked at us severely with eyes hard and cold—not the Miles I knew, but some harsh character. Sweat beaded on his bald head. Even Frederick did not strum notes to fill the brief silence that followed. His hand lay inert over the lute’s strings.

  “What worth has man,” Miles repeated, this time in a growl, each word chewed and spat like some distasteful thing, “who must be fed and watered? Who grows tired and falls ill? What worth has man, who questions orders and makes mistakes? Who can grow resentful and sabotage his master?” His eyes roved over us like a predator’s, mouth set in a bitter line. “None, I tell you. That is why I am through with this expensive liability. I bid you all adieu and good night, my servants. Take your sniveling to some other doorstep.”

  Miles eased back in his chair, face relaxing. One eyebrow arched at us, and he tilted a corner of his mouth up in the barest of smiles. “So said the old widower the night he fired off all of his house servants, even his diminutive cook, who had served him for nearly fifteen years. Off into the cold winter’s night he sent them, to seek shelter, to beg and to freeze.”

  I tucked my arms to my chest and settled back into Beth’s lap, relaxing into the story. My hackles were still raised, but Miles could have that effect on me. He was by far the greatest actor of our troupe.

  In his own voice, Miles continued.

  “The next day a very large carriage steamed up to the house of the old widower, and a most peculiar parade rolled and strutted and shuffled from its opened back end. A squat automaton on spidery legs came first, crawling like a crab. Behind it walked a man-shaped machine that clanked with each step. And, finally, a tom that looked like a stove on wheels with too many arms.

  “‘What would you have them do?’ puffed the engineer. The old man told the engineer when he wanted his meals cooked, and what rooms he wanted cleaned, and all the other chores the servants had once seen to. The task of coding the automatons took little more than an hour, and when the engineer was done, he went away again in his carriage.

  “The toms required no reminders, no yelling and no pleas. They asked no questions. They simply went about their work: the squat, crabby tom to its floor cleaning; the tom with the stove belly to its cooking; the manlike tom to its tasks of dusting and seeing to the old man’s every whim.

  “Pleased with their labor, the old widower retired to his bed to take a nap. His lunch was cooking and the floor tom was cleaning the hall carpets, so there was nothing for him to do save rest and relax.

  “Upon waking, he stretched and walked downstairs, looking forward to a clean house and a good dinner, with none of the quibbling or awkward looks from the servants. Just blessed, blessed solitude.

  “Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he immediately noticed something wrong. He did not remember ever seeing that much of the floor’s wood before. It seemed that the runner rug had moved. Upon setting foot in the hall, he discovered the squat floor tom resting perfectly still at the end of the hall, the rug taut underneath it. Jammed. The displacement of the rug had wrested a china cabinet from its position against the wall, and a row of fine plates lay in shattered fragments on the floor. He threw his hands to his head.

  “‘The plates! The plates! My wife’s precious china plates! Oooooooh.’”

  Miles clutched his head and moaned, staring at the floor as if at a mess of broken china pieces and lost memories. The act teased a smile from Rolph. He sat deeply in his chair, boneless with relaxation. Firelight lit his eyes a warm honey color, and I wondered if their striking amber color had simply been a trick of the light earlier.

  I felt a featherlight touch on my arm and looked up. Beth flicked a surreptitious look at Rolph and then back to me. She arched an eyebrow, and I felt my face flush. I’d been caught staring.

  “With a cry, the old man stomped up to the inert automaton. ‘Dratted, bloody thing!’ He shoved at it with his foot, but it did not move. He pulled and pulled at the rug that it had eaten up, but the runner was thoroughly lodged in its inner workings. ‘I will need to send a call for the mechanic right away. You cursed thing! Help! I need help moving this dratted heavy cabinet back. And oh, the plates!’

  “He went to the parlor, where he knew he would find the serving tom. He found it there, busy dusting one of the far shelves. The room looked quite bare. His careful stacks of books—the finance ledgers piled by year, the history books piled by era, the economics books piled by author—were all gone. The tom had put away all of them. His magnifying glass was nowhere to be seen, nor his pipe. His slippers, which the servants had always left before his reclining chair for him, had been tucked under the low table at the chair’s side where they were too far from his reach. ‘What…have…you…done?’

  “The serving tom paused. It turned to the old widower. ‘Sir. I have tidied the parlor. Was this not your request?’

  “‘Yes, I told you to tidy the parlor! Not bloody put everything away! No. No bother. Come with me.’

  “The tom shuffled to the hallway with him and clattered as it stumbled on an upturned edge of the runner. Pieces of the fragmented china crunched under its feet.
/>   “‘Take care where you step!’

  “‘Command does not compute.’

  “‘Aaarrgh! Never mind! Sweep this mess up! The china, sweep the broken china up! And throw it away! Into the rubbish bin!’

  “The tom did as it was told, and when it was done, the old man said, ‘Now make this cabinet flush with the wall!’

  “Again, it did as it was told. It pushed the cabinet until it was against the wall again, and kept pushing. And pushing. By the time the old widower realized what was happening, the wood of the cabinet shuddered, and the entire piece of furniture collapsed. Wood and china fell to a heap on the floor. The tom stooped, as if to continue pushing the ruins.

  “The old widower’s face turned a livid shade of red. ‘What are you doing?’

  “‘Sir. The command was to make the cabinet flush with the wall.’

  “‘Not—I—no. No. Stop—halt. Do not do anything else.’

  “The old man turned toward the kitchen, from which came the tantalizing aroma of cooking. Perhaps he could salvage his evening with a good meal. He stepped over the ruins of the cabinet and past the jammed floor tom. In the dining room, he found the kitchen tom setting a place. Steam rose from a slice of meat and the potatoes garnishing it. He pushed this aside and speared his fork into the slice of pie that had been set next to it. The crust was flaky and perfect, and the fork sank into gooey pie filling and through the soft bottom crust.

  “He raised the bite to his lips…

  “It slipped so delectably into his mouth…

  “And then he spat it out. The pie tasted of pure salt!

  “‘Outrageous! Horrible! This is not food!’ He flung his fork down and stormed into the kitchen to find the pots of spices, salt and sugar still lying open on the countertop. Three of the jars—a green one, a red one and a blue one—said Sugar. The old man’s cook had always understood that the green “sugar” jar held real sugar, while the blue held mustard and red held salt. When he saw this, his face turned as red as a boiler, and he shouted at the kitchen tom. ‘That’s enough! Stop what you are doing!’

  “The old man sent a message to the automaton merchant to have the tommies taken back straightaway. He spent the rest of his day hunting the streets for his old staff. He found one begging on the streets, while another had gone to her sister’s house, and still another had found a new job. He begged them all to come back, but not even the beggar would return to him, and so the old man went home to his ruined dinner and ruined home, without help.

  “The end.”

  * * *

  I wrinkled my eyebrows at Miles. “What was that? That sounds like some stuck thing you pulled out of the stomper’s exhaust pipe.”

  He pulled his cap snugly over his head. “Well, someone didn’t want to hear the story I had planned to tell, and so I used my imagination and improvised.”

  “Something an automaton wouldn’t be able to do. Clever,” said Rolph, shifting in his chair.

  Beth squirmed and patted my head. I took the signal to sit up, and she stretched her legs with a sigh. The side of my face ached dully where I was sure a red mark had been pressed into my skin. When I smiled and patted my own crossed legs, Beth curled up with her head on my lap. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.

  “How’s your nose?” I asked.

  “Still itchy. And my eyes are watering up. It’s probably all the furs.”

  I pet her arm sympathetically.

  Outside, the wind still howled through the eaves. I was pleased that the storm had not died down, for it would afford me extra time here in this warm cabin, surrounded by story and song and the musky scent of animal pelts—as well as more time to puzzle over Rolph. I looked at him and bit my lip. He seemed relaxed enough now, so I dared to ask, “Do you have a story to share?”

  He was silent for a time, eyes focused on some other place. I held my breath, hoping I hadn’t asked another wrong question.

  I was chewing over the words “never mind” when Rolph finally sat up.

  “I have one.”

  Chapter Five

  Our host sat forward and relaxed back again, scanned all of our gazes, looked away and appeared to visibly still himself. The swell of his throat bobbed as he took a swallow. I wondered how long it had been since he had shared the company of others. What sort of inner strength did he have to muster to speak to the four of us sitting here in the intimate space of his living room?

  When he finally spoke, his voice was low and nearly hoarse. “My story is about a man, and science, and hubris, and a fall…”

  I tightened my grip on Beth’s shoulder and would have squeezed my knees to my chest had she not been curled on my lap. Beth’s puppet tales delighted me, Frederick’s music could hold me still for hours and Miles immersed me in his stories with his dramatic performances…but with only one sentence, Rolph stole the breath from my lungs.

  Again, he glanced at us and then away.

  “I supposed you’ve all heard of alchemy before. It’s an old science concerned with the transformation of matter and the purification of spirit. Once, it was considered a high science, a great pursuit. Now, most regard it as superstition. Many have forgotten it exists. Very few still practice it, searching perhaps for wealth, or immortality, or answers.

  “For one man, it was an inquiry into the nature of life. His name was Michael. He was a professor of biology at the Royal College of the Arts and Sciences. Young but well respected. And he had a wife, a beautiful woman with hair the color of golden wheat and a laugh like bells that rang out through the day, marking their happiness together. Her name was Celia, and she had a grace about her because she was the daughter of a ballet dancer, every movement gentle and flowing and poised, almost as if the entire world was her studio.

  “Together they had two beautiful children, both girls, both as lovely as she—one with the straight golden hair of her mother and the other with the tawny waves of her father, just a year apart in age. Every week he took them to the zoo to see the animals and the gardens. They loved the tiger the most. ‘Theodore,’ they named it, and they brought it chicken giblets and believed that the creature looked forward to their visit every Saturday…”

  Rolph paused and stared into the fire, eyes blinking slowly.

  “Michael’s pursuit of alchemy began as work for his university. There was a great push in the academic world to discover the mechanism behind evolution. More than a quarter of a century after the release of Darwin’s Origin of Species, and still no one understood how evolution worked. There was money and fame involved for those who discovered the secret first, and Michael was under great pressure to uncover it. Surely, alchemy—the science of transformation—held the key he was looking for.

  “But perhaps the secret of the link between living creatures remains secret for a reason.

  “Michael’s dabbles were fruitless at first. Books on alchemy were rare, and much of what had been written focused solely on gold and the human soul. Certain supplies were hard to come by. But slowly, his offices at the university and at home became laboratories.

  “His first discovery came late one night as he sat in his study, reading old books by the lamplight. He hoped that the words would blur together and lull him to sleep. But instead of finding rest, he had a flash of insight. The idea sent him running into the parlor to fetch his wife’s finch cage.

  “Into the early hours of the morning, when no sane man is awake, he isolated and distilled and mixed compounds faster than he ever had before. The formula was suddenly clear to him—a potion to draw up a creature’s baser nature.

  “He opened the door of the cage as he had seen his wife open it many times before, and snatched for one of the finches as she sometimes did. She had a way of grabbing it so that her hand encircled its wings, securing them to its body, before she allowed the girls to pet its downy head. Michael was not so practiced. The finches squeaked like children’s toys and beat around the cage with wings so fast they blurred. Finally he grabbed one, n
early crushing its slender body, and then forced the tip of a dropper into its mouth. Just a tiny bit of the red potion was all it took before the bird began to transform in his hand.

  “The eyes were the first to change. They swelled into orange globes as the pupils narrowed into thin vertical lines—so like a lizard’s that he dropped the bird. It fluttered once, lamely, and then lay on the desk and stared up at him as its yellow feathers melted into blue scales. Its body grew and pulled itself into a new shape. The beak, now blunt, stretched open to reveal full rows of sharp teeth like needles. A strangled cry issued forth.

  “Michael clamped his hand over the creature to still its thrashing, but it bit him, and he snapped his hand back so quickly that he flung the beast across the room. He dived to retrieve it, but before he could, it became a finch again and flew into the air to flutter aimlessly about the study. Save for the tiny teeth marks in the flesh of his hand, which dripped blood as red as the potion bottle on his desk, he would have thought the entire episode a dream or an illusion.

  “After that night, he was like a man consumed by a single driving passion, and his life whittled into one sharp point. If his wife stopped laughing and grew pale from worry, and if his daughters went solemn and stopped begging the butcher for giblets to feed the tiger, he was blind to it.

  “Three months passed like this before he perfected his compound. You could say that he had discovered anti-alchemy, for he seemed to be able to return material to its baser state, rather than refine it into a purer, more advanced one. He was able to reach back into a creature’s evolutionary history and restore it to a previous form.

  “But the formula didn’t work quite as he imagined it would.”

  Rolph’s voice lowered to a murmur, and I curled my hand on Beth’s shoulder. I stopped being self-conscious of staring, because all of our eyes were trained on him.