Beauty & Cruelty

by Meredith Katz

  Once she was sure the stacks were settled, she slowly pulled her arms away from them and then, lacking anywhere else to rest them, put her hands on him instead. She petted him slowly and steadily, kneading the fat fur at the back of his neck and hoping he didn't start to drool. The Cat had a terrible drooling problem.

  She was fortunate; before he could get himself into such a deep-chested rumble that he'd start to foam, his purr trickled to a stop. He peered up at her with consideration. "Even though you're petting, you're still angry. It's not because of Talia, is it?"

  Oh boy.

  "Why?" she asked, a little archly, frowning down at him. "Should I be?" She hadn't heard anything of Talia in years now. It wasn't like she was likely to be getting up to anything. Not much of a troublemaker. More of a layabout.

  "I don't know. What should make you angry?"

  "Oh, yes, 'should', a word no cat has ever understood." She sighed again. Attempting a conversation with the Cat was always very trying. She rephrased herself carefully: "Has Beauty done something to make me mad?"

  "If that's not why you're mad, then no."

  "I'm mad because—" she trailed off, embarrassed suddenly. It was beneath her. All of this, this whole life, was beneath her. Fighting with the manager. Being insulted by a customer—having a customer. Serving businessmen coffee during the morning rush. Living in the middle of iron and pollution and human noise and human waste and petty human daily business, having to earn money in order to survive, living off scraps of other people's books. It was all beneath her. She thought that perhaps if she explained, the Cat would pity her, and that would be unbearable. Who would ever admit to being pitied by a cat? "Never mind why," she said, and resumed petting him.

  "All right," the Cat said. He squinted his eyes shut and started his rumble again.

  Cruelty closed her eyes. "Cat, what has Beauty done?"

  "She's going to save our world," the Cat said. "Or so she says."

  That startled an incredulous laugh from Cruelty. "How, exactly? Has she finally stopped lying around and gotten up to do some work?"

  Claws dug in and, for one infuriating moment, Cruelty thought the Cat might be criticizing her for making fun of Talia, but no, he'd just started to knead as she petted him.

  "Well no, she's still lying around, of course," the Cat said. "She's still asleep, of course. She says she has a dream to fix the world, though, of course."

  "She's quite the dreamer, that one," Cruelty said.

  "She's letting in humans," the Cat said. "She's pouring power into the old tales of human abductions by the fairies. She says the only way to survive is to become known or believed as real. Because humanity only believes in what they think could be real."

  Cruelty sucked air back in and only kept petting because it was easier to think when her hands were busy. Her mind had gone blank, and she forcibly pulled it out of the shock that shuddered through her body. "She's a fool," Cruelty said. "A fool, and an innocent who is still waiting for a prince to rescue her, for a prince to rescue the world in stasis around her. Is that her hope? To bring over enough humans that one of them will surely be her prince?"

  "Humanity could carry our tales. Humanity always has."

  "Humanity doesn't carry our tales anymore," Cruelty said. She kept her tone as blunt as possible, ruthless; even the Cat had to listen to the truth sometimes. "'Fairy Tale' has become a synonym of 'unbelievable.' 'That's just a fairy tale.' Live out here a little, and you'll see it. Belief is considered an embarrassment. Every child longs for the day they can scornfully tell those younger than them, 'I don't believe in that, I'm not a little kid anymore.' Beauty should accept that and die in her sleep."

  The Cat shifted comfortably, apparently disinterested in her vitriol, and started to drool. "Well," he said peaceably, "it doesn't matter to me one way or another. Cats will always be cats, regardless of the rest of our world. You might have to worry about humanity, but cats will always know their king."

  It was true enough that he had nothing to fear—even to humans, cats were one of the last realms of plausible magic. That in itself made it a little strange that he'd even bothered to come out here to her. Biting her lip and staring off into space, she kept petting him and ignored the slowly growing wet patch on her thigh.

  Whatever this plan of Talia's consisted of, however many or few kidnappings she intended to engage in, Cruelty didn't believe it would work. If the Archetypes could bring their magic into this world and have it hushed up, taken apart, dissected, then bringing people into their own world would only produce rare, isolated cases that would be even more easily ignored. Talia might be good and kind and gracious, beautiful and melodic, and surely other things besides—Cruelty didn't even remember the rest of the wishes Talia was granted at her birth. But she was an innocent, end of story. That had always been her role as an Archetype. An innocent, and too curious by far. Whatever form it took, there would always be a spinning wheel, a dangerous foreign thing she was compelled by desire to touch.

  Perhaps this was the spinning wheel this time. Talia would let the humans in, and then what? Maybe her own world will lose its charm, lose its remaining delight; it would stop being a thing that at least the youngest children could fantasize about, could believe in, and become just another place. One hard to get to, hard to fit into maps, but a place. Vacation spot. Housing.

  Cruelty wondered how many Talia had already called in, and if they had, in the spirit of exploration (that most human of spirits), gone through Cruelty's old castle, if they had touched her books and herbs and her wonders. If they had slept in her bed like Goldilocks, perhaps. Made her home their home, perhaps.

  Heaven forbid Talia ask anyone before opening their world to foreign invasion.

  Still, it was true that for Talia, this might be the only way she could imagine to get them out of a slow strangling death. Even for Talia, something as vague as this plan surely wasn't ideal. She was stuck there in a bed, unmoving, unable to act without proxies. And it would take the agreement of other Archetypes to get enough power to start stealing people over there. Everyone who was in Talia's situation must be getting desperate. So she must have asked someone, if not Cruelty herself. Though that was its own kind of insult; they shared a story, and she didn't even take the time to ask Cruelty?

  Cruelty had it easy, she reminded herself. For those who looked nearly indistinguishable from humanity, it was simple enough to just vanish into reality. She could pass as human forever if necessary, be just another person until their time came again, if it ever would. Cruelty found that unlikely. But it was harder for others. For the individuals whose tales were woven around Motifs of entrapment, they were of course entrapped. For those who could not pass as humans or animals, what could they pass as? And then there were the sad few who could leave but didn't; who believed that if they just stayed in their homes, stayed in their world, it would continue to be a living world, continue to be a Tale, not just a story.

  They wouldn't be able to pretend for much longer either way.

  Cruelty rose, cradling the Cat in her arms. He had preferred to be seated, not held, and he complained loudly at the shift in position and overweight hanging indignity, digging his claws into her arms roughly. "Hush now," she said distractedly. "Hush."

  "What are you doing that's worth moving when you had such a beautiful cat in your lap?" he asked mournfully, as if he were a beautiful cat at all and not a fat and patchy orange thing with a squint.

  "Checking my work schedule." She examined the calendar tacked to the wall, its red and blue marks. "Well, with Burger Village a bust, it looks like I don't work until Tuesday."

  "So?" The Cat still sounded put out by this. "You worked at a fast food restaurant? And you didn't bring me home any burgers? That's awful. You're the worst."

  They didn't even live together. "So," she said, and let him jump down when he wiggled; he hit the ground with a surprisingly loud thump. "I suppose I can peek in and see what's going on back there. Beauty needs
someone to tell her she's a fool, after all."

  The Cat laughed. He had, for whatever reasons of his own, played her, and they both knew it. He groomed his shoulder, pleased. "You're a meddler, Cruelty."

  "I always have been," she said, refusing to be offended. That was and always had been part of her Motif. Besides, Talia hadn't invited her, so she pretty much was obliged to show up. "Are you coming?"

  "Later." He flopped down on his side with a whoomph, air leaving his lungs audibly from his own weight. "I'm napping." True to form, he closed his eyes and pointedly pretended to sleep. It wasn't really a problem if he wanted to stay. He wouldn't have difficulty leaving when he chose to, even without her there. Very few people would be able to use her path unless she opened it to them, but he was the Cat, and as long as there was a door, he'd find some way to slip out.

  So she just shook her head at him. "All right then," she said, and headed to the bedroom. She had to open the closet door carefully, trying to not disturb the stacks of books around and inside it, but quickly grabbed a new, practical set of clothes. No point in going home smelling like burgers and with cat spit cooling on her work uniform leg, after all. She changed into them quickly, pulled on jeans and a long white poet's shirt with no bra underneath; her breasts were small enough that she'd never seen the need beyond pandering to modern human sensibilities. She didn't bother with socks or shoes; rather, the ability to feel grass and growing things against her skin was both more important and more pleasurable. That done, she dragged open the window beside the bed. It creaked and protested and kicked up paint dust in a thick choking cloud. Light filtered in, catching the particles flurrying in the air. She held her breath as she leaned through, reaching out and snapping a rose off the vine outside, then pulled her long red hair back, twisted it neatly, and slid the rose in to hold it in place.

  Cruelty shoved the window closed again with enough effort that she knocked a stack of books over and sent them tumbling across the bed despite her attempts to catch them. Whatever; she could deal with it later. With a sigh, she picked her way back through the surviving stacks from her bedroom to the living room, and from that to the kitchen to the back door.

  The roses grew all over the front and sides of the building, and frequently passers-by commented on it. People found it beautiful and intimidating, which was only appropriate to her. Some, with no sense of wonder in their soul, commented instead with concerns about the property value. Idiots. Still, it was a good excuse to cover the spell she had up; focused on the front, nobody noticed that they were physically incapable of looking at her backyard, which was completely overrun by vicious loops and coils of vines. They formed a solid, warped mass that blocked out the entire yard.

  Cruelty licked her lips, pondered the thorny wall in front of her, and muttered to herself, "Well Beauty, let's see what kind of mess you've made of things."

  She stepped into the briar.

  Chapter Two

  Cruelty passed through brambles without concern. Since she made them, the magic wouldn't work on her regardless, but even if she hadn't, most plant life would hesitate to harm her. Still, even for her, it took a while to traverse. The border between worlds could be strange in terms of space and time, but even considering that, something felt different this time, wrong. There was a pressure against her, like the briar wasn't sure how to stretch properly between the two places any more. It was unnerving, and she didn't like it.

  When she finally emerged, she was at a lakeside in a forest at night. At least, she thought, it was probably night; the details weren't quite right there either. She gazed up at the sky with a frown and with the green of her eyes almost completely swallowed up by her dilated pupils. The moon had already been gone when she'd left, but it looked like the stars had since vanished as well. The sky was an empty black void—perhaps, she mused, it was even day now, and they'd lost the sun as well. But she hoped not; her flowers needed the sun to grow. A selfish urge, but she'd always been that sort. Still, even with no visible celestial bodies, an eerie ambient light filtered through the air. It took her a moment to recognize it; the stars were gone, but either the starlight was still here, or one of the other Archetypes had been expending energy to keep light around.

  As she slowly turned, scanning the area, she caught sight of movement. She turned to face it, keeping her arms loose and body language open, cautious but avoiding aggression. "Hello there."

  A young man stepped into the clearing from the trees around it; he had fine black hair swept back in a short narrow ponytail, sharp features, gold eyes, and was dressed in a coarse hair shirt. He was all lanky teenage human except for his right arm, a bent wing covered in long, strong white feathers. Cruelty recognized him at once, the Sixth Son of an overthrown king. Sixth blanched pale when he made eye contact with her, then immediately swept into a low bow, his swan wing hanging from his right shoulder.

  "Lady Cruelty," Sixth said, his voice awkward and a bit raw. He dragged his words out irritatingly slowly, searching for what to say even as he spoke. "I didn't expect—I hadn't realized you were coming back."

  "Yes, well," Cruelty said, "I do have a tendency to show up where I'm not invited, don't I?"

  Sixth looked understandably worried. Cursed already, he likely hoped to not wind himself more and more deeply under. Even in his own story, he was never lucky enough to fully escape his own curse, and that trait clung to him, would make any further curses hard to escape as well. He cleared his throat, but didn't rise from his bow. "I think, rather, we were all under the impression you intended to never return and did not wish to offend you with invitations to a realm that you had no part in any longer? You are always welcome here; this is your homeland. I was merely surprised."

  "Of course," Cruelty said, rolling her eyes. Sixth was always over-cautious, too politic for her tastes. She could never talk to him long before she got bored, and she often found herself wondering if it wouldn't have been better for anyone who associated with him if he'd never transformed back. Swans were much better company than awkward teenage boys. "Sixth, can you do me a little favor?"

  Unsurprisingly, that only made him look more nervous. "Of… of course," he said gloomily. "However can I aid you, sweet Lady Cruelty?"

  Cruelty ignored his attempts to butter her up. "It seems I've got a bit turned around," she said. "The last I recall, I'd left the back door from my briar by my castle. But there seems to be a lake here instead."

  "Er, yes," Sixth said. "It's Odette's. Er, the lake, I mean. I understand it's probably not what you were–"

  "Oh, Odette," Cruelty said, saving them both from his awkwardness, and throwing him a bone. "How is she, poor dear?"

  It seemed to be the right option—Sixth's awkward look faded into a more genuine distress, and his eyes dropped from their fixed attention on her, instead glancing toward the lake. "Not so well, honestly," Sixth said, voice lower. "With the moon gone, she's unable to return to her human form. Until recently, she has been swimming on her lake at nights regardless, weeping in a swan-song of grief, but of late she has not bothered even with that. I fear for her health—we have been losing story elements, mostly, but it's a given that sooner or later the characters as well will start to go, and if she cannot hold onto the hope of her return to herself, her tie to her own Motif may fade…"

  "Yes, well, that's very interesting," Cruelty said, realizing that he was likely to continue. At his affronted look, she added, not unkindly, "Poor dear. I'll have to stop by and cheer her up at some point."

  Now he looked really worried. Predictable man. Still, she found herself little entertained by the exchange. It was old and familiar, something that had been missing in her life of late. "Ah," he said dubiously, "That's very kind of you... I'm sure if even Lady Cruelty is concerned for her, she'll have to start improving…"

  Cruelty interrupted him before she was forced to engage in any further courtesies or well-intentioned promises. "That aside, as I had stated earlier, this isn't where I left my castle."


  Sixth resettled his swan wing, discomfited. "No, Lady Cruelty," he said. "Lady Talia rearranged some things recently as part of her new policy. She's maximizing the space and spread of passageways between this world and the next. Everything should still be here—one would hope—but the old familiar patterns of our world have been changed."

  So Talia was moving the furniture to the walls to make room for the guests. Shifting the world around… she must have expended so much energy that it was a wonder she hadn't faded completely out of existence. Knowing how much self-sacrifice Talia was putting into the plan, her annoyance came more easily. "Really. Changing things on all of us. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Who died and made her queen?"

  "Ah, well, fortunately there have been no royal deaths," Sixth said. He wasn't just dull, but lacked a sense of humor as well. Definitely made a better swan. It was unfortunate that his defining Motif was his incomplete transformation, and thus he'd always seem incomplete. He plowed forward desperately, seeing her unimpressed expression. "You must understand, Lady Cruelty, we have been in desperate need of a leader—of someone to take some kind of control and help us, in our desperation–"

  "And a naive young girl is obviously the ideal choice," Cruelty said.

  "Her plan—"

  "Uh-huh, shut up." Cruelty made a lip-zipping gesture, which was probably a little lost on Sixth in his lack of modernity, but confused him into silence. Finally. "At this point, I am just going to assume that you don't actually know where my castle is, because I don't think you're stupid enough to spend this long in a conversation with me while I'm trying to find it and not spit up that information yet."

  Sixth blanched. "I—"

  "I am, however, going to assume you know where Beauty's castle is. And not only do I kind of want to have a word or two with her, but I imagine she will know where we can find my home. Yes? Yes." She patted his cheek lightly and felt him flinch under her hand. "Now, directions."