by Jack Heckel
“I apologize, good sir, but yes, I do.”
The beast gave a deep, gentle rumbling chuckle and began playing with a small golden charm he had on a chain around his neck. The yellow eyes smiled. “First, let us dispense with the titles. My name is Adam. In the tales, I am simply the Beast. As to how I came to look like this, I suppose I could say that I was the victim of a magical curse, but that would be to deny my own part in what happened.” Adam paused, considering how to start, and after a measured moment said, “How do these stories begin? Ah, yes . . .
“Once upon a time, this part of the kingdom was a thriving land, and this forest and much beyond even that was part of my family’s estate. My father was a good man, and a wise lord, but he and my mother died of fever while I was still young.” The Beast’s voice broke here and he paused to collect himself. “I was a man, but I was immature. Perhaps in time I might have grown into my new position, but I was impatient and lazy. Rather than apply myself, I summoned a fairy spirit and asked it to make me a great lord, strong in battle and feared by all. The fairy, as I have since learned, is quite literal in granting wishes, and turned me into the creature you see before you. Perhaps she thought that it would teach me a lesson.” He held up his hands in a half-shrug.
While he spoke, servants slipped quietly into the room and placed covered trays in front of the two men and poured two goblets of wine. The Beast gestured at the dishes. “I would guess that you have not had a good meal in days. Come, let’s eat!” He reached forward, and removed the lid of a large tray to reveal a turkey, cooked a perfect golden brown. Charming swallowed in anticipation. “Ah, the kitchen is trying to impress you. They do tire of cooking for one. If you would be so kind as to do the honor?” The Beast indicated with one of his clawed hands an elegant silvered carving knife and matching serving fork set beside the tray. “I signaled the servants to give us some time before they check on us again. I suspect we both have stories to tell that would be best told with fewer ears listening.”
Charming regarded his host, who was still playing with the end of the little gold necklace he was wearing. It was remarkable. The creature, Adam, was so well-mannered that Charming was finding it necessary to remind himself that his host was a monster and not some aged lord.
As Charming carved and served the turkey, the Beast picked up the thread of his story. “As I said, I was transformed by a fairy who had a remarkably strong sense of right and wrong. But if the fairy’s goal was to teach me a lesson, then I learned nothing. I was bitter and angry, and I used my new form to become a true tyrant. One day, several years after I became what I am, a merchant trespassed on my land. I was enraged, and was near to killing him. The man pleaded for his life, offering me anything, even his own daughter in exchange for his freedom.”
“But surely you didn’t accept,” Charming said, not able to hide the disgust in his voice.
The Beast smiled, but it was a humorless smile, a grim, self-mocking smile. Then he raised his goblet and took a sip of wine, and the smile was gone. “But I did. I think that act alone—that I could join in such a cruelty—justified the fairy’s punishment. I know that I have never been more deserving of this form than I was at that moment. However, then she arrived.” His voice softened. “When first I saw her, I lost my heart.”
Despite his hunger, Charming had forgotten the food, and he asked the question that had been burning in his mind for weeks, “So, you believe in love at first sight?
The question broke the Beast’s grim mood, and he smiled and winked at Charming with real affection. “My boy, every person’s life is a fairy tale. And, if you live in a fairy tale and don’t believe in love at first sight, then you are missing half the story. Yes, I believe in love at first sight, because I have felt its keen sting.”
“What did she think of you?” Charming asked.
“Oh, she was terrified. She hated me. How could she not? I had imprisoned her father and now held her hostage. I can only imagine what she thought my intentions were. Was she to die or suffer some other violation?” His eyes grew hard and his jaw clenched in anger at the memory of himself. “I can say now that there is nothing in this life I will ever do that can make up for the fear and pain I put her through in those early days.” The Beast paused, his face alive with a swirl of competing emotions, and then that same little self-mocking smile flickered out and the moment passed. He tucked the necklace back into his shirt and began tearing at his meat with massive clawed hands. In between bites, he continued. “Nevertheless, I tried to court her.”
“Did it work?” Charming asked as he cut another slice of meat.
The Beast wiped his snout and chuckled, “Not a bit.”
Charming served himself and, after a few ravenous bites, leaned closer to the Beast, intrigued. “Then how did you win her?”
“I didn’t win her,” he answered with another of his knowing winks. “As improbable as it sounds, she and I became friends; and in time, she decided that she could love me, and I, for my part, learned to trust that I was worthy of her love.” He raised his goblet. “I have found that love isn’t about conquest, but having the strength to surrender.”
They ate in silence for a time before the Beast came back to his story. “We married and, apart from a few squabbles that she always won, lived happily thereafter. My anger was gone and I dedicated myself to being the man my beloved deserved. We lived and loved well and long, and then, two winters ago, she . . . she left this world.”
“I am sorry.”
He waved away the concern. “I am old. Death is not as frightening a specter as it was in my youth. My love passed peacefully, without pain, and I was with her at the end. There were no words left unsaid between us. I mourn her absence, but she is always with me in my heart.” Having finished eating, and telling his story, the Beast leaned back in his chair. “I have done all the talking, and all about my own ancient history. What about you? I am most interested in how you ended up in the mud outside my unfashionable manor, and bearing such an unusual trophy.”
With that, he produced the glass slipper from beneath his cloak and placed it on the table between them. It drew in the candlelight and threw a halo of sparks into the air. “If you would like to tell me your story, I am willing to listen—and I promise, young man, that your words shall not travel beyond this table.”
Charming looked up from his plate to the slipper, and, reaching out, he plucked it from the table and cradled it in his hands. The old man leaned forward and poured them both another glass of wine. Charming took no notice, his gaze completely held by the glowing slipper. Then, without noticing, he began to speak. “I’m not sure where to begin. I suppose that I was Prince Charming. Maybe you’ve heard of me?” He looked up with hopeful eyes.
The Beast pulled out an elegant pipe and packed it with tobacco. Then he lit it and, after his first few puffs of blue smoke, gave one of his kind, toothy smiles and nodded. “Everyone’s heard of Prince Charming.”
“Then you know all about me.”
The Beast shrugged and pointed the stem of the pipe at his guest. “People called me ‘the Beast,’ but it is only a title. It is who people think I should be, not who I am. Is ‘Prince Charming’ who you are?”
The question caught Charming off guard. All of his life he had been Prince Charming, and he had heard nothing but praise for what he would do.
Voices from his past sang in his head:
We await our savior’s coming in glory with the same certainty that we await the day that Prince Charming shall free us from the Dragon!
Oh, when you speak in couplet, I’m so moved that I nearly swoon. . .
There is no “boy” like Charming.
As Royal Tailor I can say without hesitation, no one else can carry off purple hose with such aplomb.
They had all been wrong. He wasn’t the slayer of the dragon. He wasn’t the Princess’s savior.
Now he was not even Prince Charming, although perhaps he could still carry off purple hose. Nonetheless, he was just Edward, and he wasn’t sure who that was. He had never been just Edward before.
His head was swimming again, and his hands were shaking. To calm his nerves, Charming took a sip of his wine, and then another; and when he placed his goblet back on the table, he was surprised to see that it was nearly empty.
That deep kindly voice broke the silence. “I am sorry if my question was too personal. You do not have to answer.”
Charming gazed once more at Elizabeth’s slipper. Why am I so afraid? I have nothing to lose more valuable than what is already gone. I have nowhere left to fall that is worse than where I am. He looked back at the Beast, drawn to those kind yellow eyes, and the words came spilling out. “I don’t think I know who I am.” He downed the rest of the wine in his goblet. “All I really ever wanted was . . .” Charming fell silent. He felt warm. The wine must be getting to me.
“What did you want?” said the Beast quietly, as though afraid to break the spell of his speech.
The answer echoed in Charming’s heart, but his voice resisted saying it aloud. When he spoke it was with a reluctant slowness. “I wanted the King—no—I wanted my father to be proud of me, and now it is the one thing I can never have.” Charming slammed the table with his fist. “You ask who I am? How should I know? I am disowned. I have no family, no friends, no title, nothing. I was supposed to kill the dragon, and someone else did. I was supposed to rescue the Princess, and someone else did. I was supposed to be a great hero, and had to be rescued time and again. I have no place, no purpose . . .” He slumped in his chair. “The world doesn’t need Prince Charming.”
A brief silence greeted this pronouncement, and Charming wondered if he had shared too much. Then the Beast laughed, a short, sharp explosion of sound. Charming looked up, startled at the outburst. The other man was leaning forward in his chair, a look of surprised amusement on his face. His pipe lay forgotten in his left hand, still trailing a thin tendril of blue-gray smoke. Charming blushed. He was being laughed at. It was not an unreasonable response, but he had not expected it from his kindly host.
Charming shrugged. “You are right, it is rather pathetic, ridiculous really.”
“What—”
“I was just saying that I understand why you would laugh at me, I’m pathetic.”
The Beast shook his impressive mane as though clearing his head. “No! No! You don’t understand. I’m laughing at myself. Here I was thinking that I would listen to your story and dispense some sage advice on life, and then pat you on the head and send you back off into the world. Instead, I find myself discovering truths that, even at my age, I didn’t realize I didn’t know.”
“You are . . . you’re mocking me.”
The strange smile on the Beast’s face vanished in a twinkling. He dropped his pipe on the table and leaned forward, encircling the younger man’s forearm in his massive claw. “Charming, I am abjectly sorry for my reaction. I can only beg you to understand that I was overcome.” He let go of Charming’s wrist and used the free hand to paw at his neck until he managed to free the little golden necklace from his elaborate lace collar. Charming leaned back so he could focus on the tiny golden charm—it was a wolf’s head.
“When I was cursed, the fairy gave me this blasted wolf’s head necklace. Its symbolism cannot be mistaken, but I’ve spent my life wondering when I would earn the right to be a man again. Despite the undeserved good fortune of finding my true love, I always held a kernel of bitterness in my heart that things were not different. Only now, because of your words, do I understand. This charm will never vanish, because I will never be the man that I was. That man is dead—slain—for better or worse by my life as the Beast. In your words, the world does not need who I was.”
“I don’t understand.”
His host leaned back in his chair, a mysterious smile on his face as he twirled the little golden wolf on its chain. “If you did, I would feel myself an even greater fool. Perhaps in time understanding will come to you as it did me. For now, I would merely say that perhaps the world never did need you.”
Charming chuckled bitterly. “I know you are trying to help me, Adam, but I honestly cannot say that being told I am useless, and likely always have been, is particularly encouraging.”
The Beast waved an admonishing finger in the air at his guest. “I did not say that you are useless. What I am trying to suggest is that you stop trying to be Prince Charming, if you can, and just be Charming. Find your own meaning.”
Charming pulled the glass slipper protectively against his chest.
The Beast smiled. “I don’t know the whole story of that slipper, young man, but if the foot matches the shoe, then I would say you are definitely on the right track.”
Charming laughed, this time a little less bitterly than before. “I know you’re right, but whereas when I was Prince Charming I was fool enough to think she was beneath me, now that I am only ‘Charming,’ she is so far above me that I doubt I shall ever be given the chance to speak to her again.”
“Ah, but that is a problem that can be met, not a crisis of the soul. I think if you give your lady fair the chance to love the real you, you may find an almost limitless reservoir of forgiveness.”
Without another word, he pulled the golden chain with the little wolf from his neck. “May I give this to you? I have no more need of it, and for some reason I think it might be of help to you.”
Charming took the chain and put it on. “It would be my honor.”
The Beast drew back and breathed deeply. He seemed less weary. “Thank you. Now, please enjoy my hospitality and stay as long as you need. Charming, my home is yours.”
SO IT CAME to pass that Charming stayed in the manor of Adam, the Beast, much to the irritation of his butler, Giles. After a time, his smile returned and he found it increasingly easy to laugh. It was as though a burden had been lifted from his mind. He thought that he might enjoy being simply Edward Charming. It had also become more and more apparent to him how deeply he had fallen for Elizabeth Pickett. She was in his thoughts constantly, and he spent most of his time staring at her glass slipper and wondering how he might win her back.
It was toward the end of a pleasant afternoon tea, during which Charming and the Beast had spent their time discussing ways in which an audience might be gained with Lady Elizabeth, that Giles made an announcement. “My lord, the dwarves are here again with another play, begging for patronage. Normally, I would have sent them away, my lord, but after your instructions the other night, I thought I should ask.”
“Now, now, Giles,” said the Beast. “They deserve the opportunity to perform, and we are at our leisure.” The Beast spoke to Charming. “Apparently they are the troupe behind that Snow White play that was all the rage a number of years ago. Would you be interested?”
“Lord Adam, if you are at your leisure, then I am at yours.”
Giles sighed deeply and bowed. “As you wish, milords.”
The butler left to make arrangements. Adam directed Charming to a small reviewing balcony that looked out over a plaza on which a group of dwarves were busy at work putting the finishing touches on a makeshift marionette stage that they seemed to have constructed out of the bits and pieces of a cart. While he did enjoy theater, Charming was not truly in the mood for diversion. Were it not for Adam’s interest, he would have preferred they continue their discussion of Elizabeth. The bumps and bruises he had suffered were mostly healed, and he had a growing sense that it was time for him to depart. He needed to return to Castle White and find her.
The Beast cleared his throat and gestured to a pair of chairs on the balcony. “I think the players are ready to begin.”
Charming nodded absent-mindedly and took his seat. The preparations were complete, and two dwarves, one with an almost comically bright re
d nose and one with a perpetual frown, stood next to each other on one side of the stage arguing. A third, who looked to be asleep, sat slumped on the other side of the stage, a curtain rope in his hand. The Beast and Charming shared a chuckle as the grim fellow reached out and tweaked red-nose’s red nose. The frowning dwarf then stepped forward, glared up at the balcony, and announced, “Grand patron and esteemed guest, I am proud to present the premiere showing of Ash and Cinders, based on the true account of a dear maiden who we rescued, and . . .”
The sleeping dwarf awoke with a start, shouted, “Act One!,” and then jerked on the rope. The curtain opened on three very surprised dwarves who were still wrestling with an armload of tangled puppets. The two dwarves who had been introducing the play jumped at this premature start to the production and dove behind the stage, colliding with the other three and sending the whole group tumbling out of sight with a loud crash. The curtain closed.
While the Beast and Charming laughed aloud, Giles exhaled harshly and tapped his foot. After many muffled curses, the play began—again. The curtain rose on a castle and a beautiful servant girl and her brother, enslaved in the house of a cruel mistress. The play then followed the two through a series of misadventures that eventually led them to receiving an invitation to a royal ball. While the marionettes were beautifully crafted and skillfully operated, the dwarves’ constant bickering spoiled the performance. Every scene change was met by a very audible debate over the merits of the previous scene and how one performer or the other was “ruining the artistic integrity of the play.” This in turn, would lead to an incredibly technical, if still voluble, debate about the meaning of integrity in a modern theatrical context. Which in turn would lead to what sounded like an all-out brawl. It was not long before Charming began to regret Adam’s benevolence.
He had long lost interest and was really only half paying attention when the servant girl made her appearance at the royal ball. At the festivities, there was a mad woman with absurdly long hair and a prince that made an utter fool of himself.
