Beauty & Cruelty

by Meredith Katz

  Staring at her, Talia nodded slowly. The movement spilled some of her image's hair over her shoulder and she pushed the curly mass back with a hand belatedly. "We appeal to the masses, but provide a hope to the hopeless. 'If they could be happy in my situation'—"

  "But the world doesn't want that," Cruelty said. "The world wants to shift to 'This situation isn't hopeless, and with power you could get out of it'. Prejudice is unreasonable, and they want to expose that until it's treated as unreasonable—our stories, our Motifs, are all about proving that steadfastness in a powerless situation will make the situation end. Passivity. But who wants passivity to pay off? Our era was one of comforting people and saying 'you can't do anything about it, but it's all right, things will work out'. Nobody wants to hear that! Everyone wants to hear 'fuck it, you CAN do something'! And of course, sometimes people can't, but sometimes they can. No wonder we're falling by the wayside."

  Talia's eyes widened further, and she nodded rapidly after a moment. "Yes, exactly," she said. "For us, too. We've sat here passively and let ourselves wait too long. We, too; we've tried to just endure this storm of disbelief in the hopes that ultimately it'll pay out, but it won't. We have to change!"

  Cruelty dropped back on the bed with a groan. "But how? Isn't it a contradiction? We take power in order to force them to believe in our passivity? How will that work? How long will it last? If they really start to believe the old stories have a grain of truth to them... I don't know. Society would have to change for that." She recognized the whine in her own voice, the strain, and disliked it. She rubbed a hand over her face. "Martin—the man I found in the briars—like I said, he had a sob story to tell. His partner left him, he can't be himself at his workplace... etcetera, etcetera, that kind of bullshit."

  Severely, Talia said, "That isn't 'bullshit'—"

  "Oh, like hell it isn't. We've seen it all before," Cruelty said and lifted a hand into the air, making a gesture as if she could just brush the protest away. "Just a personal tragedy. Believe in love and humanity despite all the labor and poor treatment, and it'll pay off—Martin's gay, Talia. Gay and black. I know how people are. They see his skin tone and are leery of him because racial prejudices out there are still, believe me, good and strong. You know what people really don't need to be told to endure things with hard work and a smile on your face, and good things will come your way? Black people. Just trust me on this one. I've lived out there. I've read books. There's a history there of using that to justify slavery. There's a stereotype of the happy worker. Trust in love even though someone betrayed you? Sure, obviously. I asked him if fairy tales gave him any hope for that, with love as the universal constant. Yeah, well, there's no gay people in our fairy tales, he said, so exactly what's that telling him about the universal constant of his type of love?"

  Talia shut her mouth with a snap, and looked considering again. "Love is love regardless," she said. "Love is universal no matter who feels it. I mean, hypothetically that sort of love would be possible for us…"

  Cruelty opened an eye and looked at her. "Oho, is that so," she said. "What a scandalous princess I have before me."

  Talia blushed, though her lips drew tight in an irritated line. "Yes, that's the case. But," she pushed on, "we don't have stories like that. Our Motifs can fit no matter what, but the actual stories aren't—they weren't told and retold for that. And you're right. Nobody's going to want to try to take a story about other people's situations which quietly erase your own experiences and go, 'oh, it's all right, the Motifs would work either way.'"

  "You see? Relatability." Cruelty nodded, to punctuate her point.

  "Tell me more about Martin," Talia said, her tone thoughtful.

  Cruelty did. She told Talia about Martin's appearance, from personal features to his torn and dirty business clothes. She described how they met. She talked about the story he told of how he wandered into the world—how he was just too ground down one day to manage anymore and entered what he thought was a garden, just wanting to see something beautiful. She told Talia about the way he talked, the things he said, his stumbling diction and word choices, his reaction to her castle, to her claiming her throne, to her kindness, to her might. She described locking him in before coming here. Talia was so absorbed by listening and thinking it through that she didn't even react to the last with disgust.

  Instead, throughout, Talia's image paced with constant flowing motion. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth, ran her fingers through her hair—avoiding, though it wasn't visible on her image, the lock of hair that Cruelty had braided on her real body. She'd often shown that she could feel whatever prank Cruelty played on her body, and even if she didn't feel like adjusting her image for it, she clearly didn't enjoy the disparity of what she could feel and what projected behavior she enacted.

  "I recognize that thinking isn't really your best skill," Cruelty said finally, after she'd fallen silent for a few long minutes and just watched Talia continue to pace without a pause, "but what are you mulling over?"

  Talia said it carefully, clearly, enunciating each syllable as if tasting it, feeling its shape in her mouth: "Why don't we rewrite a Story?"

  Briefly, Cruelty couldn't even make sense of the words. Rewrite a Story? She could hear it, and even know what it meant, but not make sense of it. Certainly, it was possible. Humans did it all the time, adding Motifs and removing them. Archetypes like herself and Beauty, however, did not. The power to create a new Archetype, even by rewriting the old, was impossible to be within the control of an Archetype itself. They could adapt based on popular belief, or try to gain some other form of faith, or ride on the tail wind of another Archetype, or steal other cultures' stories as their own, or shift as people's understanding shifted. But not write a new Story around themselves.

  "You're insane," Cruelty told her.

  The Cat chose that moment to walk in, his fat belly wobbling back and forth as he padded across the floor. "Oh, hello," he said. "Who's insane?"

  "I'm not—" Talia attempted to put in.

  "I didn't ask who wasn't, I asked who was."

  "I'm not—"

  "Beauty is," Cruelty told the Cat. "Hello, Tom. Sorry if you came to swear fealty to her like everyone else, but I have to inform you she's completely fucking crazy. My fault, probably. Too much dreaming. I'll take the blame."

  "It's Tim," the Cat told Cruelty with dignity, and jumped up onto the bed, tucking himself into the warm spot between where Cruelty was sitting and where Beauty's body laid. "Tom is dead. I'm king now."

  Cruelty spared a moment from her incredulity to hope that Tom hadn't stunk up her house for however brief a time he'd been dead. "Oh, sorry," she said. "I was too distracted by Beauty's utter madness to notice the difference." She scratched Tim behind the ears.

  "I am not crazy," Talia protested, aggravated, as Tim started to purr happily under Cruelty's hand. "I'm serious. It can't be easy, but it must be doable. We can make it easier by following a path that's already there. If we're talking hypotheticals, I mean—"

  "Let there be life," Cruelty said sarcastically, and angled the Cat so he was drooling on Talia's hip instead of her own knee.

  "Fine!" Talia said, throwing her hands in the air. "Give up and run away like you always do! It's not like you're good for anything but lashing out pettily anyway."

  Hand stilling, tone dropping below freezing, Cruelty said, "Excuse me?"

  "You heard me," Talia said. There were spots of color high on her body's cheeks, and her image's hair was blowing around her wildly again. She was actually grinning. "Oh noooo, somebody didn't invite me to a party, better curse their newborn infant. That will definitely show her parents!"

  "Don't take your Story so personally!"

  Talia whirled a hand in the air roughly, a loop-de-loop of 'big fucking deal'. Even on her body, her breath was coming a bit faster. "You're so hung up on being this big bad fairy queen, but seriously, all your Motifs have ever represented is sour grapes and mean-spirited sl
ights."

  "What did you just—uh, no, how about cruelty and power and a reminder to show some sort of, oh, political sense when choosing who to snub and who not to—"

  "Sure," Talia said. "Cruelty enough to abandon us all when the going gets tough, power enough to pretend to be human, political sense enough to stick your nose into my plans and mock them as soon as I make them because you can't possibly bear the thought that I might ever amount to anything!"

  The Cat had stopped purring. "You are not petting me," he said plaintively into the brief lull where Talia stared at Cruelty, glowering, and Cruelty took her words in. "You are arguing. Why are you not petting?"

  "Why should I care about you one way or another?" Cruelty shouted. She sat ramrod-straight; power crackled around her. Her eyes were hot in her face, glowing with her gathering strength. "You are nothing more than a sick joke I still find humor in after all these years! The worst insult is that my Motifs need to be tied so completely to yours!"

  "You're scared of being caught in our land when it falls apart! You're scared of dying! You're scared that nobody will ever be intimidated by you again, that your entire purpose for existing will vanish. For heaven's sake, you're so desperate to keep your hold on what little power you actually have that even when you bring a problem to me, even when you want me to solve your problems, you insult me for coming up with an answer!"

  Cruelty raised a hand. She reached to grab the briars and pull them through the castle; she could easily make them impenetrable again so nobody could come here to fulfill Talia's plans. Ultimately, Talia was powerless; she was the one who controlled whether Talia won or failed—

  The Cat put a paw on her hand.

  She stared down at it, at her pale, fine hand with Tim's fat, furry, dirty paw sitting on it, at Tim staring up at her with large eyes and whiskers spread with curiosity and a patient irritation lashing his tail between them.

  "Please," Talia said, voice raw, pleading. "For once, just listen to me."

  Cruelty wasn't sure that she shouldn't do it anyway. To go ahead, ruin everything, get it over with. But the moment had been broken by something so simple.

  She exhaled, relaxed her pose. "Rewrite a Story," she said, sarcastic and cutting.

  "Yes," Talia said. "Maybe. If we could."

  Cruelty shook her head. "Well, even assuming I entertain your madness for now, how do you plan to do something like that? As you wished, I'm listening."

  Chapter Five

  "You are, after all, the bad fairy," Talia had told Cruelty after she made her (absurd, mad) suggestions. "Are you willing to act like it?"

  It had been probably the stupidest thing Talia had ever asked Cruelty, and she'd asked Cruelty many stupid questions in her time. She had only ever acted the bad fairy all these years. She'd told Talia as much sharply, pinching the skin over Talia's hip just to make her wince. But as stupid questions went, especially stupid questions on a completely ludicrous subject, Cruelty had to admit that this one made sense. At worst, this new plan of Talia's came at the cost of sacrificing one human being and possibly irritating another Archetype. Even if it were surprising that Talia was willing to sacrifice even that much, none of it would ultimately be a setback if it didn't work. It was impressive, in a sense, that Talia not only was willing to experiment but do so risking something other than herself. Then again, intelligence and wisdom were both gifts she'd received. So was kindness, though that at least was put on the back burner.

  On the other hand, Cruelty wasn't sure she wanted to think of the repercussions if it did work. "Dogs and cats living together," she muttered to herself and clambered up a river bank.

  Before she could go back home, there was a stop she needed to make. She wished she could arrive in grand style, set up the performance from the start, but it came back to Beauty's rearrangement of geography again. Good for her plans, bad for Cruelty's ability to get around easily. The place Cruelty was going was in the opposite direction of her home, the tangled connections of related stories spinning out from Beauty's side of things, rather than Cruelty's.

  So Cruelty walked, scrambled bare-footed through the water and felt mud squeeze through her toes on the other side. She grabbed handfuls of grass to haul herself up the stiff bank; at the top, she caught her breath, gazing at the forest in front of her.

  Those woods, at least, were expected. She knew well that she must pass through a deep, dark forest before she could get to where she was going. Not so bad, but she still felt a little irritated at running Talia's chores while operating so blindly. Once she'd settled this whole Martin affair, she'd go for a good long walk and learn the landscape. It would save herself time in the future to know where everything was so she could simply step between locations. Cruelty entered the forest, shedding dirt and grass from her skin until she was pristine again.

  Although it was just barely noon and the sun had been high in the sky, light was quickly lost to the thick branches of the forest. The place was dark and still, designed to intimidate and alarm, to drive travelers to desperation. Even breathing sounded loud here; Cruelty, at least, did not hold her breath but listened to it come in and out, echo off the silence of the trees around her like a signpost, a marker for direction and distance.

  About half an hour in, picking her way through non-existent trails, over fallen logs and through bushes, she saw a wolf sitting on a rock, watching her. A little pleased by the familiar sight of a guardian in a place this decayed, she tipped an invisible hat to him.

  He laughed. "This isn't your domain, Lady Cruelty."

  "The Beast Enchantress is gone," she said, blunt but still smiling. "Trapped by humans in a human world. Unless she's able to show up to contest her ownership and kick me off her property, I doubt my trespass will cause me any trouble."

  This appeared to be the first the wolf had heard of it. He grew serious, golden eyes narrowing. "What is that you said?"

  "Your great master is captive or worse," Cruelty said. "Humans are heartless. She has become an experiment to them, something to study rather than something to fear. She will be picked apart and analyzed until there is nothing left of her. So her domain is not something I think she will come to defend."

  Bristling, the wolf showed its teeth, a low growl rising from its throat. "You nevertheless trespass, witch!"

  "I do," Cruelty said. "I come to visit your mistress's target. However, I do not intend to harm him, merely to offer him something to spend his time on. I'm given to understand he's long been in need of distractions. I will not live here, or rule here, or claim any sort of power here. So, if I were you, I would let me continue on with my errand."

  The wolf held its pose for a long moment, then finally bowed, deep and reluctant, lips still pulled back off its teeth in a snarl. "My lady will hear of this," he said.

  "I really doubt that," Cruelty said flatly. She started to walk again, leaving the animal behind her. The wolf remained seated to watch her leave with his tail curled over his toes. But he did not call for aid or set off any traps; no bears came running, no bushes closed in on her, no vines tried to tighten around her.

  So it seemed her point was taken.

  She proceeded on. The forest was deep; the intent of it was to force travelers to get lost in it until they were desperately in need of hospitality—shocking really that Martin had stumbled on her briar rather than these woods in the first place. It was wide and varied enough to make it difficult for a wanderer to notice where the forest overlapped and folded over on itself. Though, of course, enchantment helped with that goal.

  The wolf had been the first of three sentinels. The second was a crow; the third, almost at the castle itself, was a frog. The wolf had clearly informed them of the situation and they did not give her trouble. The crow watched her from a branch, its head tilted to keep her in its vision, and resettled its feathers at her nod to him; the frog sat on a rock, hunkered down, and croaked miserably at her as if in mourning as she passed.

  Such melodrama, she thought
, amused, and mimed a croak back.

  Finally, she reached the castle's boundary. It started with a large bronze gate, twisted and bent, and beyond that was a fountain. She slid the gate open—it was always unlatched; the master and prisoner of this castle was always waiting for someone to wander in—and shut it behind her, heading over to the fountain. The water was clear and inviting, and she dipped the ladle in to taste it; it was still pure and sweet. This much enchantment hadn't been unwound, then.

  She could take her time with this; recall the story properly. But to do so wasn't her nature, and she had no need of hospitality with a home of her own. Beyond that, it wasn't herself she wished to bind to this place in Talia's heartless experiment. So she avoided entering the castle proper, veered around to the side and slipped through a smaller, finer gate into the most beautiful flower garden that existed in their world. Besides her own, of course.

  Poppies, carnations, peonies, and more piled up in ever-narrowing spirals through the garden, a narrow path cutting through them so a visitor could see them all. Every type of domestic flower, every type of wild flower, were tangled together in beautiful patterns, as though the person who maintained it, the owner of the castle, wanted nothing more than to show off the beauty he was capable of.

  Cruelty followed the spirals to the center.