Beauty and the Beast

by Maria Tatar

  The doctor asked that the two be left alone until the following day, and the king withdrew most happily, filled with the hope that his son would survive.

  As soon as the king departed, Mariquita took the second feather, dipped it into the blood of the witches, and rubbed it on the young man’s wounds. At this point, the prince began to recover consciousness. His scabs came off, falling bit by bit from his body.

  The next day the king returned and found his son in even better condition. Now he was able to speak. Naturally, the king left his room even happier than on the previous visit.

  Soon after the king left the room, Mariquita took the third feather, covered it in the blood that remained in her bottle, and rubbed it over the body of the prince. At this point, the patient was fully recovered, and he asked to put on his clothes. He recognized Mariquita, and in the midst of her joy, she told him everything that had happened since the time he had been wounded, and how, through the conversation of the witches, she had discovered that her stepmother was responsible for placing the knives in the basin.

  When Mariquita finished her story, the king entered, and words cannot describe the joy he experienced upon seeing his son standing on his feet, completely recovered. The prince told his father everything he had just found out from Mariquita and asked for permission to marry her, since they loved each other deeply, and he owed his life to her. The king happily consented, and the marriage was celebrated within a few days, amidst the great enthusiasm of everyone who lived in the kingdom.

  And I can faithfully vouch for this, because I was present at the wedding, and I ate and drank so much there that I almost burst.

  And with this my story ended, and the wind blew it out to sea.

  NICHOLAS THE FISH

  Colombia

  A tale with a fascinating mélange of motifs, “Nicholas the Fish” reminds us of how tropes can be reshuffled in kaleidoscopic fashion to produce startlingly new and different narratives. The story begins with the kind of foolish bargain familiar from tales like “Jack and the Beanstalk” or “The Girl Without Hands.” Unique in its depiction of a sea monster, half human, half fish, it takes many unexpected turns, with a heroine who struggles to maintain her dignity despite what is imposed on her. The mother of all animals seems to figure as an ancient deity whose role is functionally equivalent to the devils and other folkloric creatures from whose head a single strand of hair must be pulled in order to restore order or win a reward. Her hair appears to humans in the form of a meadow atop a mountain.

  There was once a poor man who married a poor woman. Every day the man would go fishing and return with enough fish to sell and cover the day’s expenses. The couple survived from one day to the next on the fish caught by the husband. One day, the man went fishing and wore himself out casting his net into the water, yet he caught nothing, not even a single fish.

  On the way home, the man passed by a well and heard a voice say, “If you bring me the lovely thing that comes out to greet you when you come home, I will give you all the fish you want.”

  The man thought to himself, “That must be the puppy I keep at home. It always greets me by jumping up on me when I return from fishing.”

  The voice repeated the offer three times, and the third time the man answered, “All right, I will bring it to you, but where should I bring it?”

  “Right here,” the voice replied.

  Then the man cast his net and caught a load of fish. He walked home a very happy man that day. When he was about to arrive home, however, his little daughter came running out to greet him and hug him.

  The man quickly realized exactly what this meant and said to her, “Oh! If you knew what just happened, you would not be hugging me.”

  He entered the house and his wife asked, “Why are you crying?”

  “If you knew, you wouldn’t ask,” he responded.

  The woman began to prepare the fish for dinner while the man remained silent. When the food was ready, he said, “My appetite has vanished.”

  “Why?” his wife asked.

  “If you knew, you wouldn’t ask.”

  “What happened? Tell me!”

  The man began to weep, and then he told her, “Look, this is what happened. I was walking home empty-handed and a voice told me that if I handed over the precious thing that greeted me on my return, I would be given all the fish I wanted. And our little daughter came out to greet me!”

  The woman said, “Well, you made a promise. Let the will of God be done.”

  The terms of the agreement gave the man three days. He dressed up his daughter and, on the third day, brought her to the well.

  “Here is what you asked for,” the man said. The voice then spoke, “Take her along the river until you find a house. Leave her there.”

  They found the house and entered it. It was a very well-arranged house, with nice chairs and tables inside. The man said, “My dear daughter, you must stay here without me.” She consented happily, and he shut the door and went home. Night arrived, and it soon became apparent that the house was enchanted. When light was needed, candles were lit; when the girl wanted to eat, food appeared on the table; and when she was tired, a hammock was hung. Yet there was not a soul in sight.

  When she wanted to rest, the lights went out, just like that. And when she woke up in the morning, the table was set. She saw food there, yet there was not a soul around.

  Then, at night, after the lights went out, the voice of a man called out to her, “Come here and kill the louse that is bothering me.”

  So she walked over, found the man, and began to massage his head. After a little while, he said, “That’s enough, go back to sleep.” And so she did, for she was still just a little girl.

  It was peaceful there in that house. One night the man returned and asked her again to rid him of the louse. While rubbing his head, she touched him a little lower and felt something strange, similar to wool, but in the darkness she was not able to see what it was.

  One night the man said to her, “Tomorrow you can go see your family, and especially your father. A horse will be waiting for you at the door. But make sure that you do not let them touch you.”

  She agreed not to let herself be touched.

  “Here, take some money for your father,” the man said. She collected it and, in the morning, she left.

  When she arrived home, her mother ran toward her to give her a hug, but the girl withdrew and said that she could not be touched.

  “Come down from the horse,” the parents said. But she responded, “I cannot come down now.”

  The parents were amazed to see her, for she was now a full-grown woman. She handed over the money and left them.

  When she returned, she did not know who could have taken her horse and unsaddled it. Night arrived, and when the lights went out, the man returned. She went over to rub his head.

  “Well, did you do as I asked?” he said.

  “Yes, I didn’t let them touch me.”

  “Good. On Sunday you’re going to go back and do the same thing.”

  So she returned to her parents and carried out his orders perfectly. The man was very pleased.

  However, when the man instructed the girl to visit her parents a third time, something different happened. She was rubbing his head, and she placed her hand on his body and felt something scaly. “This man is enchanted!” she thought. Then the man said, “Tomorrow you will go back to your house, but this time, you may not bring anything back from your house.”

  The girl agreed, and the next day she went home. This time, she got off the horse, entered the house, and let her mother and father hug her. The three of them ate and smoked and drank joyously. As the girl was preparing to leave, she said to her mother, “Mama, a man appears in my room every night and asks me to kill the lice on his head. There is something unusual about him. It might be a good idea for me to tak
e a matchbox and a candle back with me.”

  And so the mother gave them to her. The girl placed the objects into her pocket and left. That night, when she was rubbing the man’s head, she realized that her soothing touch had lulled him to sleep. Then she thought, “Now I’m finally going to see him.” So she lit a match and saw that he was a fish from the waist down and a man from the waist up.

  The man awoke from his feigned sleep and said, “Look at you, you scamp! Now I’ve caught you. I told you not to bring anything from home, but you went and brought back those candles!”

  The girl was frightened. “Well,” said the man, “the good time that you’ve had here is over. Now you will have to do some work. Tomorrow you will put on the workman’s clothing that will be on the table, and you will have a sombrero, a machete, and sandals.”

  In the morning, the girl found the clothing and the man said to her, “Put on these clothes. It’s time for you to go to the king and ask for work to make up for your failure to obey me.” The girl dressed herself as a man, put on the sombrero, and left the house.

  “Head toward the right,” the man instructed her.

  When she arrived before the king, she greeted him and noticed that he was still quite young. The king addressed her with affection, “Why are you here, young man?”

  “I’m in need of work,” she responded. “I’m here to see whether there might be some tasks here for me.”

  “Of course there are,” the king replied. He knew all along that the laborer was not a man, for everything about her was feminine. She was given a room. The following day, the king set her a task.

  “Look,” he said, “this task will be difficult, because it will require you to walk a great distance. I need a strand of hair from the mother of all of the world’s animals.”

  So, the girl set out without a clue as to where to go. After she had walked a good distance, she met a little old woman, who approached her and asked, “Where are you headed, young man?”

  The girl answered, “I am walking in search of a strand of hair from the mother of all of the world’s animals.”

  “That won’t be difficult,” the old woman replied. “Since you happen to be carrying food and water, could you spare some for my son and me? We’re thirsty.”

  The girl divided up everything she had, giving food and water to them both. When they parted, the old woman pointed toward a mountain and said, “Walk to that mountain, and there you will find the mother of all animals. You will see a meadow. If its surface is covered with grass, step on it without fear and carefully pluck a strand of the hair. But if the meadow contains no grass, then do not step on it, for that means that the mother is awake.”

  When the girl reached the meadow, she found it covered with grass. She waded through the stalks and found a strand that she could pluck. She then wrapped it up, made it into a ball, and headed straight back to the king. She gave him the strand, and a joyous expression appeared on his face as he untangled it.

  The strand was astonishingly long, and it seemed to be endless as it formed a huge pile before the king. The king then declared, “This youth has done an excellent job. How much should I pay you?”

  “It’s up to you to decide,” she replied.

  So he gave her thousands upon thousands of pesos, then said, “Now you can go work in a different part of the land.”

  Carrying the pesos, the girl set off. She encountered another old woman, actually the same one as before. Again she reported that she was lost and trying to find her way back home.

  The little old woman said, “Don’t be afraid! Take this wand and carry it home with you. Whenever you are lost, wave the wand and say, ‘Wand, wand, by your power and by the power that God has given you, show me the way home.’ It will guide you.”

  And so the girl departed. The wand sent her down the right path until she reached home at last. Her mother and father were thrilled to see her, even though she was dressed as a man, for they recognized the features of her face.

  The mother asked, “Has our daughter turned into a man?”

  The girl took off her clothing and put on one of her dresses. She was their daughter again, and now she would stay at home with them. With the money she had brought back home, the family established themselves as merchants, and their fortune grew. They opened up a shop and wanted for nothing from then on.

  THE MUSKRAT HUSBAND

  Alaska

  This story was told in Cup’ik (a variety of Central Alaska Yupik Eskimo) by Thomas Moses in Chevak, Alaska. The year was 1978, and Anthony C. Woodbury recorded the tale. The Yupiks are a group of indigenous peoples living in Alaska and the Russian Far East. With a population of 24,000 in the 2001 U.S. census, the Yupik people form one of the largest Native American linguistic communities in the United States. This tale is known as a quliraq, or story passed down by ancestors, and, like some stories of that type, it uses generic names for the characters. The tale is akin to many other narratives about animal bridegrooms, and the human wife suffers many of the same unutterable agonies of separation and loss. But the conclusion of this story, although traditional in a Yupik context, deviates sharply from that of “Beauty and the Beast.”

  There was once a village

  that lay

  on the bank of a river.

  This village

  had a great hunter

  and the great hunter

  had a daughter.

  Although many young men

  asked to marry his daughter,

  the great hunter did not permit her

  to accept a husband.

  There was one young man whom she wanted for a husband,

  one of the young men of the village.

  And this young man

  tried to get her for his wife.

  But though he asked to marry her, her father

  would not let him,

  this man

  whom his daughter wanted for a husband.

  So it was, and the girl decided in anger never to marry.

  . . .

  As time passed, even her father

  tried to persuade her to accept a husband,

  but she did not want to:

  she still was angry that the man she wanted to marry

  had been rejected by her father.

  Well, life went on that way,

  in that village there,

  on the bank of the river.

  . . .

  One day,

  the great hunter’s daughter

  went outside;

  behind the village some boys were playing

  at the bank of an oxbow lake,

  noisily chasing something.

  She went up to see what they were chasing,

  and when she got there,

  she saw it was a muskrat!

  By that time

  the muskrat was faltering,

  and though it dove,

  it never stayed underwater long;

  it looked like it soon would die.

  But then

  she saved the muskrat by dispersing

  the boys who were chasing it.

  By the time she made them stop

  the muskrat was exhausted; it was practically dead.

  . . .

  They [the boys] went home,

  and she too went home

  behind them.

  And life went on as usual

  for a few weeks.

  . . .

  Then one day,

  while she was doing her chores,

  the woman

  saw

  a man,

  and his parka was made of muskrat!

  He said to her

  that out of gratitude he was coming to ask her to be his wife,

  out of gratitude
that she had saved him

  as she did.

  And the woman

  accepted him,

  because she was still without a husband.

  Now, this man was a stranger,

  an odd-looking sort of stranger.

  Well, he married her, and they lived as husband and wife.

  He always caught lots of game when he hunted;

  he even caught lots of bearded seal.

  . . .

  But this man

  warned his wife repeatedly,

  never ever to take his clothes,

  even when they were wet,

  and put them by the fire pit

  to dry in the heat.

  And this was how it was to be,

  even if he came home all wet.

  . . .

  Well, on one occasion

  he was all wet when he came home,

  and later on she dried his grass bootliners.

  When the fireplace

  was lit,

  she dried them

  in its heat.

  Her husband was gone while she was doing this,

  somewhere outside.

  . . .

  After a while he came back.

  Well, when he got inside,

  he saw his bootliners,

  which had been dried in the heat.

  “Ungh!” he sighed,

  and he turned around quickly and ran out.

  His wife

  went out after him.

  She saw as she followed him,

  that he was running to the lake behind the village.

  And she

  chased him, running right behind him, because she still wanted him as her husband.

  Now the lake they were going to

  was where the boys had been chasing the muskrat,

  and when her husband reached it, right away

  he dove in.

  When the woman

  reached the lake herself, then

  she too dove right in.

  Both of them went underwater, and then came up together,