Beauty & Cruelty

by Meredith Katz

"Yes," he said. "Thank you. Thank you."

  *~*~*

  "Start small," Cruelty warned. "You're hungrier than you feel right now, so don't make yourself sick."

  He nodded, and accepted the fruits she handed him; pears and apples and peaches growing from the plants that filled her kitchen. They were perfectly ripe and perfectly delicious, of course, as they must be; growing things and stasis were her domain. Even the pears were perfectly ripe all the time, and pears were the most finicky fruit; left to their own devices, their ripeness period seemed perfectly timed so they were invariably under-ripe or overripe when anyone bit in.

  So it wasn't just his hunger that caused him to remark on how good it tasted, though he probably thought it was. He probably thought he was so hungry that cardboard would taste delicious. It might, given how hungry he was. He finished the fruit quickly.

  "I'll get you more food," she said, "but let that sit for a moment. Tell me about yourself in the meantime. You mentioned a partner who left you and a workplace that you can't trust to understand you..."

  Martin's troubles very clearly came rushing back to him, brow furrowing. "Ah, yeah," he said. "It, they..." He shrugged after a moment, rubbed his cheek uncomfortably. "I guess I haven't had much luck lately."

  "I guess not," she echoed, deliberately keeping any edge from her voice. Like he could talk to her about being down on his luck. "How long were you two together?"

  "Three years," he said a little painfully. "We've lived together for the last two of those..."

  She tapped her fingers on her lips, leaning back in her chair at the dining table. She was seated cross-legged to watch him, never mind the discourtesy of doing so at the table; it was her home and she could sit however she wanted. "What happened? If he sneaked out, it was in no way a mutual breakup."

  Martin shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "The note he left said it was another man. I don't—I never had any idea that there was anybody else. How does that even happen, Rue? I thought everything was fine between us, but something like that was actually going on in the background. How does that happen?" His voice was shaking again, though this time it didn't sound exactly like tears. Something else, some powerful emotion, though still rough and unsteady. "What's wrong with people?"

  Despite the absurdity of the situation, Cruelty found herself a little fascinated. Oh, it was obvious how it happened—nobody truly knew everything about anyone else, and someone who lacked a suspicious personality (as Martin certainly seemed to lack) would be far less likely to notice when somebody was acting suspiciously. They'd be far, far less likely to notice when the other person was actively trying to hide it. But that wasn't really the source of her fascination. That was just mundanity. Cruelty said, "With people? Do one man's lies define all of humanity?"

  "I'm not saying that everybody's like that," Martin said, defensive. "But I didn't think he was like that either. I loved him, you know? I thought I knew him, and I was wrong. Like, is it me? Am I the one who's in the wrong here? Did I do something?"

  "There's always a risk that cruelty will creep into a relationship," Cruelty said. "Lazy cruelty, everyday cruelty. Maybe it was you, maybe it was him. Maybe he loved you; maybe it became the opposite. But the opposite of love isn't hate. It's—"

  "Indifference," Martin said, tone a bit frustrated. "I read too, you know, but that doesn't… it doesn't help anything."

  Cruelty laughed. "Don't be so bitter," she said. "If you're well-read, surely there's some hope outside of yourself you can turn to. It's a universal constant in the old stories that suffering may come first, but there is always someone out there for us. Don't fairy tales caution you that others may abuse your trust, but someone will always, someday, always prove that others are worth trusting regardless?"

  "Fairy tales, huh." Martin put a peach pit down on the plate Cruelty had provided for that purpose, watched it wobble with a bitter look on his dusty, exhausted face. "Kids' stories? I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. You know, they're all written for princes finding princesses and princesses finding princes. Find me a fairy tale written for a guy like me. You can't do it, right? There's nothing universal about a fairy tale love."

  He rubbed tears from his eyes, too worn out and pushed to the edge to show anything but how he was feeling. Cruelty, shocked to her core, pretended not to notice. She rose, not looking at him. Around her, the air felt light and fragile. She breathed it in with slow hitching breaths, longed for a book to read to center herself. She needed to draw some strength from something and briefly missed her house, where she could sit like a spider in the web, eating the small buzzing bursts of imagination that fell into her hands. Instead she was back inside her own reality, hearing that they weren't actually Archetypes. Not truly. Not to this person. If they weren't to him, they weren't to many others as well.

  "Let me get you more food," she said.

  Cruelty used her time in the kitchen to calm herself down again, to touch on all the spells in her castle, undo some of the less important ones and draw their strength into her. She felt completely unsteady, head light, but she did, as promised, get him more food, and then, as promised, she sent him for a bath, and to his bed, and let him sleep.

  And then, because his completely honest denial had drained her, she perched over his bed as he slept and ate his dreams. They were straightforward, honest dreams of wanting something beautiful; the rose garden he had initially wandered into when he found himself sucked into this world. Somehow, despite having been trapped in brambles for days, that image was still pure in his heart. A fantastical tangled garden, something nice to see.

  She tasted its thorns in her mouth, and gently sent in creeping reminders of her own brambles. She withdrew when she was full enough to consider it a fair repayment and no sooner. Then she crept out of his room and went to her throne, wrapped the deer pelt on it around her as if for warmth, curled her bare feet under her. She knew she probably looked as foreign here as Martin did, wearing her modern human clothes, her button-up shirt and her rolled jeans. She gazed towards her front gate without seeing it, as if waiting for some kind of imagined visitor, and chased her thoughts around and around in circles.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, Martin wandered downstairs from the guest room Cruelty had put him in and found Cruelty sitting on her throne, still wrapped up in her deer pelt. She forced an immediate smile at him. "Good morning, Sunshine," she said.

  He stared at her groggily, tired after what she'd done to his REM sleep. "Uh," he said, cautiously. He seemed to have relaxed a little with sleep, enough to stop reacting to everything with emotion alone—to instead rationally see how potentially dangerous this all was to him. He certainly was staying in the castle of a mysterious stranger in a mysterious land. "Rue. Good morning."

  Something inside her, already wound tight, tightened more at the sound of her human name; she could feel herself nearly vibrating with the force of it, a choking pressure sitting in her chest. She tensed against the urge to lash out against him just to feel better.

  But she didn't want to resist. It wasn't as though she'd forgotten her original reasons in playing nice. The goal was to to break him in slowly, to make him usable. But she felt sick at the idea. Her nature was her nature. Besides, rather than slowly revealing the truth to him, she might as well awe him. If he resisted believing in them, then let him reevaluate his beliefs. She drummed her fingers against her throne and thought, oh well. She might as well see how he rebuilt when she yanked the rug out from under him.

  She gave in.

  Cruelty floated into the air from her seat, her hair floating around her with a stormy force, pressing herself upward on the thrust of sheer power. She could feel the shock radiating from him as he took three quick steps backward. Humans were so unfortunately rational. Even faced with this, she was sure he was searching for some way to make what he saw fit within his imagined reality.

  She lifted a hand and snapped her fingers. Silver bars slammed down
over the exit. They were beautiful, images she had taken from his dream, wrought and elegant. Roses grew up them as they both watched, vines winding around and blossoms opening.

  "Well Martin, I've got a busy day ahead of me today," she said, keeping her tone light. "So I'll have to leave you to your own devices. You're welcome to anything you find in the kitchen, but don't get too greedy. Explore any doors open to you, but don't try to force any doors that aren't. I'm no Bluebeard, but I'm close enough you really shouldn't try your luck."

  "What are you?" he asked, the sound of his voice tight, his throat trying to strangle the words before they could come out. That was good; it was a good sign. It meant that he was seeing what was in front of him, and he actually believed it.

  The feeling of that washed over her like a cool wave. His belief poured into her, filling and refreshing and nearly bringing tears to her eyes; she felt like a dry plant being watered. She could grow with this, she could unfurl leaves and open petals and reach up to the sky.

  Still, Cruelty just smiled. "I told you," she repeated herself, voice just mocking enough to turn her words into an obvious lie, "I'm just Rue."

  And then, with a thunderclap, she teleported herself away.

  It cost some energy, but it was showy enough to be worthwhile. Teleportation wasn't necessarily her preference—there were always risks with it. If she wasn't entirely sure where she was going, she might end up somewhere she didn't intend to be; she'd heard enough stories of others like her being trapped in trees and cut down with the wood that she tended to use it sparingly. With everything having shifted in their world, it was risky to use if she wasn't returning to places where she'd already been. Under normal circumstances, just walking would probably be a wiser use of her powers, but teleportation did have its purpose. She couldn't resist the urge to drive the nail into the coffin of Martin's rationality with that kind of grand gesture. If he had come to believe in magic from what he saw earlier, then using magic to leave him alone and trapped would only reinforce it. It was a pity, though, that she couldn't see his face when she'd vanished with a flash and a bang.

  Still, there was someone's reaction she could possibly see, and she cast her gaze around to look for it as soon as she appeared in Talia's room with a matching flash-bang.

  Talia's body didn't move, of course, too deeply in the clutches of sleep to jump awake from the noise and the light, but Talia's projected spirit popped into visibility a moment later, a sudden shocked action. Talia's expression mimicked it, cheeks a little more flushed than usual, eyes wide, plump pink lips parted in an 'O' of surprise. Every inch of her was the shocked ingénue.

  "Morning, Beauty," Cruelty said.

  Mouth closing and fine brows drawing down, Talia let out a disgruntled huff. "Was that really necessary?" she asked.

  "Necessary? No," Cruelty said, and flung herself on the bed beside Talia's body. "Worth it? Oh, yes."

  Standing beside the bed, Talia seemed to hesitate a long moment, then, surprisingly, curtsied to her. The move was mocking, sarcastic, a deference she clearly didn't feel. Cruelty grinned. "And to what," Talia asked, "do I owe the pleasure of this delightful visit, Cruelty?"

  "Can't I just have missed you?"

  Dimpling prettily with a smile, Talia said flatly, "Oh, how sweet. But really, Cruelty, I can't imagine you'd swing by so early just for the pleasure of my company."

  "Delightful as it always is," Cruelty said dryly. She rolled onto her side and lazily started braiding some curled locks of Talia's hair. "There's a human in my castle."

  With her back to the projection, she couldn't see Talia's pretty forehead crease, but she could hear it in her voice, a sudden genuine apology there. "Oh Cruelty, I'm sorry. I assumed you'd kept the place locked. Has he been there long?"

  "I did keep it locked," Cruelty said. "I found him tangled up in the briars on my way home yesterday and took him in. Poor boy. Lost and alone, without any love in the world." She searched her wrists for hair ties; she'd started keeping them there while working fast food. Not finding any, she checked her jeans pocket and found one there instead. "One of the people you brought over, starving to death after two days in the briars. Did you think of that risk, Beauty?"

  "Maybe if you had fewer briars around, this wouldn't be a problem," Talia said, but she sounded a little taken aback regardless. "I just had people open a few gates and had them start to call people, Cruelty. It's not like I stuck him in the briar myself."

  "Oh what, briars kill people, people don't kill people?" Cruelty rolled over to look at Talia's projected face, saw confusion there. "It isn't even that modern a reference, Beauty. Get with the program."

  Talia huffed. "That aside," she said, something hard in her voice, "that's a negligible risk."

  Cruelty pushed herself up on the heel of one hand, the other rising to tuck red hair behind an ear. She eyed Talia thoughtfully, thoroughly. "Repeat that?" she asked.

  "I'm aware of the possibility that they might not all survive," Talia said. She, too, took a seat on the bed, or at least she pretended to sit, although the mattress didn't sink under her image's weight, and the blankets didn't crease, and it didn't feel, of course, like there was anybody sitting next to Cruelty at all. "This is not the kindest world to live in if you do not know its rules, and you know how many rules there are. Of course, I'd prefer if it goes well for all of them and none come to harm; the moral implications aside, a death has no gain for either them or us, but—"

  Lips curling into a smile, Cruelty said, "The moral implications aside, hm?"

  "Trust you to fixate on that."

  Cruelty turned, leaning halfway through Talia's image—a shiver of Talia's being passed through her, leaving a floral taste on her tongue, the sound of music in her ears—and put the palm of her hand flat over Talia's body's heart, feeling the warm soft flesh of Talia's skin compress under her touch. It was beating slowly and steadily in her sleep. "How heartless you are becoming."

  "Do not think I would not mourn every death," Talia spat at her. "Do not think I would not weep and grieve and sing them a death-song to carry their spirits to whatever place it is their spirits go. Do not think the very idea doesn't scream in counter-harmony to my Archetype. But right now, we are the ones who are dying, and sacrifices must be made."

  Still halfway through her, she felt Talia's resistance against trope, felt her rage, the sudden staccato pace of her personal rhythm even while the body under her hand continued to breathe slowly and peacefully. Careful, knowing her own eyes were bright with her sudden excitement, Cruelty leaned back, raised her hand from Talia's body, pulled herself out of Talia's image. "So you can still be pricked," Cruelty said.

  Talia seemed to deflate a bit, tears sparkling in her image's eyes. "Cruelty, don't—"

  "Well," Cruelty said brightly, "you'll be happy to hear that when I found this one, I fed him, cleaned him up, and put him to bed for a good night's rest after letting him sob out his oh-so-terrible story on me. So save your tears for the first person you really do get killed."

  Teeth grinding in her sleep, image's fists balled, Talia said, "Why are you here, Cruelty?"

  "I wanted to talk to you about him, obviously," Cruelty said. She assumed a bored air; she had already gotten under Talia's skin and she intended to stay there, make this conversation strengthen her as much as possible. "Why did you think I brought him up? Honestly, Beauty, keep up."

  Talia's image rose abruptly and started to pace the confines of her room. Although her image couldn't be affected by anything like the friction of floor and air, she had a strained energy in her that made her hair and nightgown flutter back behind her. Cruelty had once seen children taunting a jaguar at a zoo; it had paced back and forth along the cage, stalking them from the other side, frustration radiating off it with every slinking step it took. Its agitation had only fired them up more, made them taunt it harder—of course they wanted to see the cat get closer and closer, since it was never able to reach them. How else would they get a go
od look at it?

  "Stop smirking at me like that," Talia burst out. "I hate your stupid face."

  "Very mature. I can see why we're all putting our trust in you." Cruelty put her hands together in a single clap. "Brava."

  A huff of air. "So," Talia said, with strained patience. "What did you want to say about this human, of whom you are taking such purely excellent care out of the kindness of your ever-magnanimous heart?"

  Cruelty picked up the braid she'd made in Talia's hair and tickled the princess's nose with its end. Of course there was no reaction, and she let it drop. "What would you say our problem is? Why is it that people don't listen to the tales anymore?"

  At the serious tone in Cruelty's voice, Talia slowed a little, looked back at her. "The burden of proof," she said after a moment. "Science has been around a long time, but the extreme skepticism of the modern age is so great that it scrapes away further and further at the unprovable."

  "I think people can suspend disbelief if they wish to," Cruelty said.

  "Are you suggesting they don't want to? That comes back to proof, though," Talia said. "Humans want to believe only in what they can prove and, by doing so, control the world around them."

  A short laugh bubbled up in Cruelty's throat and died before it reached the air. "It's true," she said. "And it's working. Look what we've become."

  "I know," Talia said. Her tone, more than anything, was tired, nearly defeated. Cruelty thought of Talia trapped here in her bed every day, watching the world around her change. It's just as well that Cruelty had got out when she could. Even if she'd come back now, better to miss the worst of it than to see all of the deterioration as it happened.

  "I don't disagree with your idea of shocking the world," Cruelty said. "You know? Forcing belief. But we can't just be feared—"

  Talia let out a particularly unladylike snort. "Whatever happened to your plans to become an urban legend—"

  "We need to be relatable," Cruelty finished, ignoring Talia's interruption. She tugged on the braid she made earlier, as if to get Talia's attention; it worked, irritation crossing Talia's face. Her image reached a hand up to her head. She could feel it, at least. "Wasn't that the old party line? If you work hard enough, eventually you'll be rewarded. If you are abused, suck it up, because your courtesy will eventually help free you. If your only skill is trusting, then trust. Are the people around you cheaters? Continue being honest, because even if it seems like they're benefiting, you'll be the one to come out on top. It's not that any of these things are true; it's not that they're teaching any sort of lesson. It's that for people who are in situations they can't get out of, they provide a hope that they can be happy. Right?"