A father’s pride, nothing more.
Yet something in that eulogy—for that is what it is—stirs a memory inside me. I see myself painting a red rose onto soft skin and that luscious mouth smiling at me in a gentle tease. I see a dream from so long ago it hardly seems real. A painted world, a wolf howling at the moon, and a woman standing before me. Her eyes are brave, but pleading at the same time. I couldn’t hear her that first time. I hear her now. “Find me,” she says. “Please, Bastien, help me!”
After all these years I know better than to overlook a portent as powerful as this. If there’s the smallest chance the hag’s vision was true, I will not ignore it.
I whisper in my jailer’s ear the merest hint of an idea.
“This girl,” the Beast says curiously, “you love her very much.”
“Yes, my... Monsieur. With all my heart. More than my own life.”
And there it is. The Beast narrows his eyes. “Let’s see if this saint of yours is capable of the same. I will release you unharmed and give you my best horse to take you home.”
The merchant looks up with wide eyes filled with hope. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”
The Beast picks up the felled rose between his claws and holds it out to the man. “You will deliver your gift to your daughter and send her here to take your place.”
The man’s face becomes white as a ghost and for long moments he cannot speak. “No,” he finally pleads. “Kill me if you must, but spare my daughter.”
The Beast roars. “You dare defy me! ”
There are tears in the merchant’s eyes. His heart beats too fast. I can almost feel it breaking.
I have no sympathy for his plight, and neither does the Beast. “I… can’t,” the human whispers brokenly.
“But you will,” the Beast assures him without mercy. “I will see the youngest of your daughters in my castle in two day’s time, or I will come for her myself and take her from you, along with everything else you hold dear.”
The merchant drops his face into his hands and weeps.
An odd swirl of triumph and disappointment overtake the Beast, and me along with him.
The servants are spying from inside the castle, their disapproving regard a heavy weight on the Beast. “You fear she will not do this.” It is an accusation.
“To save me, I fear she will. I fear she will pay a high price for her selflessness. And her father’s folly. Please, Monsieur, I would ask again. Take my life and spare her.”
The Beast growls.
“But you will not,” the merchant says, a man who’s lost all hope with one slice of a knife through the stem of a precious rose. Head bent in supplication, he says, “Then I can only beg for you to have mercy on my Lyssette.”
The simple entreaty, spoken purely out of love, humbles the Beast. “You have my word she will come to no harm at my hands.” That he says it to me as much as the merchant galls me.
I am powerless to stop the man from leaving once the decree is passed.
The Beast is half crazed with anticipation, waiting for the merchant to make good on his word, else risk his terrible wrath. He has the gravel beneath his paws three times, impatient to do something, schooling himself not to. Pacing before the hearth, ears trained for any hint of a sound that might announce an approaching rider.
When she walks through the door, not even the strongest of restraints can keep me from looking out from deep within the Beast to behold her face. The truth of her stuns me. I mocked a father’s pride, never thinking he might be understating his child’s virtues. She is just as I painted her, only so much more. She is sunshine and tempest, grace and integrity. She’s a magnificent summer storm and the gentlest, wide eyed doe. She makes the Beast maudlin with metaphors until I silence his mind and call her just one.
Not Strength.
Hope.
I watch through his eyes as she calls him names. I listen with his ears to her soft footsteps as she explores the castle. I feel his joy when she finds the library, and I hear his thoughts as he plans for the next full moon.
With Mademoiselle Lyssette, my torment and my savior at last inside my castle, I stay quiet and do nothing. The hag painted my future with her cards. She showed me my salvation, and after more than three hundred years, here she is. No matter what the Beast does, she is my destiny, not his. He can try to keep me from her, but he will never be able to keep her from finding me.
That certainty gives me the satisfaction I need to patiently while away the first full moon.
I bide my time and wait.
The End
About The Author
Alianne is an avid lover of stories of all kinds. Having grown up with fairy tales in a place where it almost seemed they were real, it was no surprise when she began making up her own stories. She loves books, hiking, archery, and won’t shy away from travel and zip lining Alianne graduated with a business degree and when she’s not off in the land of fantasy, she lives in California.
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Website: http://aliannedonnelly.com
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Bastien Page 11
