Beauty & Cruelty

by Meredith Katz

"You're making plans, aren't you? You talked about pawning the gems off. Planning to get yourself back on your feet once you get home," Cruelty said. "So I'm curious to see how that'll work when you get there. Besides, if I find your enchantress, I'll have to find some way of getting in contact with you."

  "I didn't even think—" Jane started, then smiled, ducking her head awkwardly. "You were really going to?"

  "If I can. Who knows if she's even alive? You might be spitting jewels the rest of your life."

  "Why?" Jane asked. Her eyes flicked up to meet Cruelty's.

  Cruelty hesitated. She owed the girl nothing; if anything, Jane owed her. Not that she'd call on that favor; Jane had done her the courtesy of expressing her gratitude, so she was willing to let it go. If she'd been rude or dismissive of it, that would have been another story.

  But it wasn't like she needed to have a particularly deep reason, she thought. Jane was interesting, albeit in a remarkably banal, normal way. She was at a turning point of her unremarkable human life, and had to decide how to carry herself forward. Jane had motive in the form of her own abusive past; she had opportunity in the form of the jewels she now had which she could turn into money; and she had liberty in that she was not currently under anyone's control or domination. Cruelty had been part of the turning point of that last, and their stories had thus intersected; even if it wasn't a particularly exciting story, it was one she wanted to see through to its payoff. That was reason enough, she decided.

  "I just feel like it," she said.

  "All right," Jane said.

  They exchanged emails, Cruelty writing hers down on paper she produced with a small spell, tearing it off to give Jane, writing Jane's on the rest of the paper. Even that spell drained her. It should have been easy, paper being made of plants. She didn't have much left in her these days, she thought bitterly, not after the gates. But she tried not to let the effort show, and Jane didn't seem to notice, putting the paper in a pocket with the rest of her jewels.

  "I really don't know how to thank you enough," Jane said.

  "You have, though," Cruelty said, "thanked me. I appreciate it, so don't—"

  She cut herself off mid-sentence, going still at the uneasy feeling forming in the pit of her stomach. A spell—the biggest spell she had made, the only one really left active—was being interfered with.

  Someone was touching Talia's hand.

  The flax there hadn't come out. That she was sure of; it didn't feel like it was being pulled or even deliberately tugged at, more as if it was being touched in passing, as if someone had pushed Talia's hand aside.

  "Rue?"

  "Shh," Cruelty said, raising a hand. There was nothing more to it than that touch. She didn't feel any more, didn't sense any attempt to break the spell, but she couldn't shake the uneasy feeling. It felt a little as if Motifs of their story were being pulled tight, that familiar sense of echoes and retellings. She hadn't seen any of the other Archetypes go up to talk to Talia. That didn't mean none were there, or that some from elsewhere couldn't have teleported, but as far as she knew, she had been the only one to touch Talia so freely. Everyone else had some kind of respect for Talia, after all.

  The sense of unease deepened. Her energy was low; she couldn't teleport herself there.

  "What's going on?"

  "Excuse me," Cruelty said, and headed deeper into the castle. There was no further touch, and perhaps Talia would laugh at her actually showing concern, but…

  She broke into a run.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The sense of panic grew, and when Cruelty reached Talia's door and flung it open, she was completely convinced that something was wrong, and equally prepared to mock herself mercilessly when it turned out nothing was.

  She was so shocked to be proven right that she actually just stood in the door for a second, looking at Rick crouched over Talia's prone body, hands wrapped around her throat and thumbs digging in under her chin. She could see the tension in his arms, the way his wiry muscles stood out taut, the tremble in them, see Talia's skin flushed white immediately where his hands were pressed and red all above and below it. Ants were crawling across her body, black specks skittering around anxiously.

  The heavy oak door had blocked out the sound of Talia's screaming, but with it open, the sound washed over her, almost muffling the sound of Talia's body's raspy struggle to breathe. Talia was screaming and screaming, flailing insubstantial fists at him in terror. There was no more she could do. The only power she'd had was to alter the subconscious connections between stories, something already in the domain of sleep, and rearrange their landscape—everything else had been done through the aid of other Archetypes. She certainly couldn't prevent her own assault. She had never been able to, in her story. Whether the version was a kiss or rape, she had always been written to be passive to whatever violence a man put on her.

  Cruelty herself didn't feel as if she had any magic left in her fingertips, not when even creating paper had left her exhausted. She, too, felt helpless, but the rage inside her demanded an answer, needed an outlet, and someone had to do something.

  She gathered herself and ran at him.

  She slammed into Rick, tearing him off Talia with the force of her momentum and flinging him across the bed, ants scattering. His fingernails tore strips of skin from Talia's throat, but she didn't have time to deal with that, falling across Talia's body as she grabbed Rick's shirt and flung them both backward again, trying to yank him away from the bed toward—wherever. Not here. Not this.

  Rick rolled with the momentum, spitting "Rue," at her in recognition, grabbing her and landing on top of her as they both fell backward off the bed. Her head hit the stone floor and stars exploded in front of her vision with a crack of pain she felt through every bone, even her teeth. Stunned for a moment, she began struggling as soon as she was able, feeling him dragging her up, but was unable to get out of the way as he punched her in the face.

  She saw stars again, nose and mouth aching, tasted blood, and flung up a knee, burying it in his stomach. He choked, but grabbed her hair and flung her down on the bed, across Talia again so her cheek was pressed into the mattress between Talia's thigh and her hand, and Talia's leg pressed into her throat hard enough to choke her. Talia's unresponsive fingers rested against Cruelty's chin like some sort of gentle caress, and that was the stupidest, poorly timed moment for that kind of idea, Cruelty thought uncharitably. If Talia could move right now, it would be to deal with this bullshit, not to touch her face as a lover might.

  Rick kept his hand on the back of Cruelty's head, panting hard. "You think you're so fucking clever, bitch," he spat. "But you still let me stay in this castle. What, you didn't think I was any threat to your evil plans? Fuck! I've been paying attention, you know! She's the reason we're all here, right? So I'll kill her and we'll get out of this hell hole! I'll kill you too—bet that'll break this spell, huh?"

  "Cruelty, get up," Talia was begging her, somewhere behind. "Fight him, please! You need to help! I can't do it on my own! Please, Rue—!"

  I'm trying, Cruelty thought back, irritable, unable to speak aloud with her air cut off. She struggled under his grip, trying to get her arms underneath herself, a knee up, something to give herself leverage to throw him off her. She couldn't. He had her pinned too well, a knee in the small of her back, a hand and most of his weight pressing down against the back of her neck. Talia's legs and hips were in the way, too; she was trapped, bent over Talia in an awkward way that kept her arms from moving back toward him with any efficiency. Still she tried, scrabbling behind herself.

  "Fuck you for making this difficult," Rick muttered at her. "You think I wanted to do this? I don't. I don't want to do this—but what choice do I have? It doesn't matter, anyway. You're not real. Nothing I do to you matters, you're not even real, none of this is real…"

  It didn't sound like he was trying to convince himself of his own sanity or anything, Cruelty thought. There was nothing of that kind of desperation
in his tone. Rather, he sounded like he was trying to justify something. His attempted murder. Murders? He wasn't stopping, certainly, and once she was out of the way she had no doubt that she'd carry on with Talia as he had been. If Talia could help her, they might get out of this, but she couldn't―

  The idea came to her in a moment and her blood chilled at the thought. There was no time to let herself doubt it, no time to think it through or to over-think it. Whatever action she was going to take had to happen now, and she didn't have the strength to do this on her own. Not anymore.

  She opened her mouth, took Talia's finger in her mouth, and sucked.

  As she felt the piece of flax slide free, she felt the spell binding them together unweave all at once. Very literally, she'd pulled on a loose thread, the only loose thread in the spell, and it completely came apart, loosening, unwinding, unwrapping itself from around Talia and snapping the bindings of story between them. She felt tears well up from behind her eyelids as she swallowed the piece of flax, felt it disappear down her throat.

  Cruelty had wondered before what it would be like to see Talia wake up. It could be anything. The story of Sleeping Beauty had been written and performed countless times with a wide variety of endings envisioned to the tale. Perhaps a slow, peaceful blinking as she rose from sleep as if emerging from the water. Perhaps sudden alertness. Perhaps a drugged inability to fling the vestiges of sleep from her, yawning and messy and real. She'd fantasized it a thousand times, the forbidden outcome.

  Pressed down as she was, she didn't see a thing. But she felt it as Talia suddenly sat upright, felt her twist, felt the vibrating force of an impact, and heard a loud crunch and crash and the sound of shattering ceramic.

  Rick was flung off Cruelty, and she scrambled up across Talia's legs to turn and see what had happened. Talia was holding the remains of the lamp from her bedside, a twisted tall glass and ceramic gas lantern that had scattered oil when she'd slung it around. Parts of the sheets were alight, and so were parts of Rick's clothing and hair. Talia had managed to hit him in the head with the lamp, and he had fallen back onto his side on the floor next to the bed, was twisting and writhing in pain, grabbing at the places he'd caught fire and was howling, trying to put it out. There was blood all over him; his head was really bleeding like crazy, Cruelty thought. She felt dizzy with shock and with the sudden ability to breathe.

  "Oh goodness," Talia said, slurring her words a little, staring at Rick writhing on the floor. And then, emphatically, "Shit, what do I do?"

  Cruelty scrambled across Talia again to get her feet on the floor, grabbed the lamp from Talia's hand, and slammed it into Rick's head a couple more times, heart pounding wildly. It was satisfying and a little horrifying, and Rick finally fell silent and still.

  Then she grabbed the sheets off Talia and smothered Rick with it, getting the fires out of both at once, while Talia clutched at her own hair, drawing her knees up to her chest, and stared at her.

  "Right. Okay," Cruelty said, after a long moment and checking to be certain that nothing was still on fire.

  "Um. Is he dead?"

  That was, Cruelty had to admit, a good question. She pushed the blankets aside, put a hand on the skin of his throat, and felt for life force. It was still there, glowing strong inside him, and she made a face. "Yeah. He's alive. Hang on."

  She reached for the lamp again and Talia let out a little shriek and flung a leg out, kicking it away from her hand—and kicking her hand with it. Cruelty glared at her; Talia didn't look particularly sorry, even if it was clear that her aim had been poor. "Don't kill him!"

  "Look, it's fine. He was doing an evil deed, so he shouldn't come back as a spirit seeking justice…"

  "It's not fine!" Talia said. Her speech was getting clearer now, less slurred, almost to the crystal enunciation of her old projected image. "You're not killing anybody. He has a family to take care of, right? And I don't… I don't want you to kill anyone."

  That last part was a real absurdity. She was an evil fairy. She'd committed far worse ills than the murder of a man who deserved it. But Talia was sitting up from her bed, was finally sitting up from her bed, had moved her legs off the side and was attempting to stand, so Cruelty just got up and reached to help her.

  "What then?" Cruelty asked. She slung Talia's arm around her shoulder, letting her take the weight off her unsteady legs. "We can't just take him downstairs to the people there without raising a lot of questions, but if he doesn't get medical attention, he's in trouble anyway."

  "I'll—send him back. I'll send everyone back," Talia said shakily. "It has to be now, before anyone investigates this, or we'll have an uprising on our hands for sure. I'll need you to shut the gates for a day or so to guarantee that we get a fresh batch instead of drawing these ones back in, but… I'll do it now. He'll end up with anyone else who came through the gate he entered by. They can get him medical care."

  "All right," Cruelty said. She tried to help Talia to sit back down, then made a face as Talia grabbed onto her more tightly. "Talia, I need to go get Sixth. He was the one going to push them out, remember?"

  "I'll do it," Talia said.

  "But you…"

  Cruelty fell silent, looking away from her. Talia straightened, pushing her weight on her own two feet more carefully.

  "That's right," Talia said. "I'm not Sleeping Beauty anymore."

  So her powers weren't bound in the laws of sleep and passivity, Cruelty thought. But what was she, then? She was still an Archetype, clearly, but what was she if not Sleeping Beauty? What role was she filling, what significance did this Story she was telling have, what Tale would form around her? Cruelty wondered, abruptly, if that meant she was no longer the evil fairy. The evil fairy wouldn't break her own spell, after all. But she rebelled against the thought. It was fine, she thought desperately; it was fine. It had been to save her own life, after all, as well as Talia's. It was self-interested enough, wasn't it?

  "All right," Cruelty said.

  She let go of Talia completely. Let her fall or stand under her own power, she thought a little bitterly. But Talia stood, apparently having managed to find her own center enough for this, and looked around herself slowly. Her eyes were still bright like this, Cruelty thought; bright in their own right, shining from within. It wasn't just her image that had looked like that.

  Talia let out a breath. She didn't close her eyes; if anything, they only seemed to get wider and brighter as she drew her hands to her chest. Cruelty could feel the spell energy forming next to her and stepped back to give her space.

  "Leave this place," Talia said. Her voice rang out loud and clear, echoed, bounced off the walls and through the room. Out of it as well, Cruelty thought; it must fill the palace, be heard across the landscape, however distantly. "But do not forget what you learned here. There is more to life than what you see in the world around you, and more rules and meaning at play than what your common sense would tell you. Remember, and tell others."

  Cruelty felt that power in Talia suddenly press outward—whatever Talia was now, it was active, the inverse of the passive person she had needed to be for so long. But perhaps that wasn't too surprising. She'd been becoming more and more active for a long time now. The curse might have been the last thing holding her back.

  Rick's body vanished; Cruelty felt the gates she'd opened bulging wide as people passed back through them en masse. She shuddered, suddenly flung herself into her own spell-weaving, focusing on the many gates she'd opened. That, at least, she didn't need new energy for, since it was working with a spell already in place, but that didn't mean she could be careless. She'd have to close them precisely, to prevent them from drawing the same people back in and making Talia's actions useless, and avoid trapping people in the binding of reality as she closed the gates on them.

  The pressure abated, and she slammed the gates shut.

  "Got it?" Talia said, swayed, and sat down abruptly on the floor next to the puddle of blood. "Ugh…"

&nbs
p; "I got it," Cruelty said. "I can open them again whenever you want to bring the next batch in."

  "Great. Yeah. Tomorrow," Talia said.

  Cruelty looked down at her. Suddenly she felt uncertain, her heart starting to pound more tightly. She crouched. "Are you okay?"

  "Very."

  They looked at each other, both a little wide-eyed and manic.

  "What are you?" Cruelty asked finally.

  Talia was silent for a long moment, apparently trying to decide. Whether she was exploring what she felt in herself and trying to put a term to it, or thinking of naming herself by herself, she took a long few nerve-wracking moments to consider it before she opened her mouth again.

  "I think," she said hesitantly, "I might be… the Emancipated Beauty."

  Cruelty wrinkled her nose, ready to give a retort, but didn't say aloud any of the many scornful comments that came to mind. Certainly, it was a concept that very well could take an Archetype—Lady Liberty came to mind, along with the many paintings of Freedom as a woman. And if she were able to become that, then that was what she was. Certainly, the idea of the fairy tale princess who saved herself was something that was gaining traction recently, and had been something that should take an Archetype if there was enough belief to support it. But even if that had happened, Cruelty hadn't expected, hadn't wanted, for it to be her own princess.

  "I think I'll just call you Beauty," she said.

  Talia let out a sigh. "Or you could use my name, Rue," she said.

  "Don't you try to change me," Cruelty said. "You may have changed, but I won't."

  Talia didn't answer that, and so they sat for a few moments in silence before Cruelty relented a little, sighed, and said, "We should go downstairs. The other Archetypes are going to wonder what's happening and... you need to show your new self to them. Especially if you're going to continue to be the leader of this affair."

  "Yes, but…"

  "But? Honestly, Beauty…"

  Talia shook her head, reached a hand out toward her. "Just another minute, Cruelty. Just the two of us."