He was enamored with her beauty once more.
“Circe! This is wonderful! All is well, you’re of royal descent, we can be married!”
“We had to be sure you really loved her,” said Lucinda, her eyes narrowing.
“Yes, sure,” said Martha.
“We wouldn’t just…”
“Let our little sister marry a…”
“Monster!” they shouted accusingly in unison.
“Monster? How dare you!” the Prince snapped.
The sisters laughed.
“That is what we see—”
“A monster.”
“Oh, others may find you handsome enough—”
“But you have a cruel heart!”
“And that is what we see, the ugliness of your soul.”
“Soon all will see you for the cruel beast you are!”
“Sisters, please! Let me speak! He is mine, after all!” said Circe, trying to calm her sisters. “It is my right to deliver the retribution.”
“There is no need for this,” the Prince said, finally showing his fear—whether it be of the sisters or of losing the beautiful vision before him. “We can be married now. I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as you. There’s nothing to stand in our way. I must have you as my wife!”
“Your wife? Never! I see now you only loved my beauty. I will ensure no woman will ever want you no matter how you try to charm her! Not as long as you remain as you are—tainted by vain cruelty.”
The sisters’ laugh could be heard clear across the land on that night. It was so piercing it sent hundreds of birds into flight and frightened the entire population of the kingdom, even Gaston—but Circe continued with her curse while Gaston and the others wondered what ominous happenings might be afoot.
“Your ugly deeds will mar that handsome face of yours, and soon, as my sisters said, everyone will see you as the beast you are.”
She then handed the Prince the single rose she had tried to give him earlier. “And since you would not take this token of love from the woman you professed to cherish, let it then be a symbol of your doom!”
“Your doom!” Martha said, laughing while she clapped her little white hands and hopped in her tiny boots with absolute glee.
“Your doom!” joined Ruby and Lucinda, also jumping up and down, making the scene even more confusing and macabre.
“Sisters!” Circe pleaded. “I am not finished!”
She continued, “As the rose petals fall, so shall the years pass until your twenty-first birthday. If you have not found love—true love, both given and received—by that day, and sealed with a kiss, then you shall remain the horrifying creature you’ll become.”
The Prince squinted his eyes and cocked his head, trying to comprehend the meaning of this riddle.
“Oh, he’ll become the beast! He will!”
“No doubt! He’ll never change his wicked ways!”
The sisters were again clapping and jumping in vindictive delight. Their laughter seemed to feed upon itself. The more they laughed, the louder it became, and the more insane the sisters seemed to be. Circe had to take them in hand once again.
“Sisters, stop! He has to know the terms of the curse or it will not be binding.”
The sisters’ laughter ceased at once, and they became unnervingly quiet, twitching with discomfort.
“Mustn’t ruin his punishment!”
“No, mustn’t do that!”
Circe, hearing her sisters’ chatter again, gave them a reproachful look, silencing them immediately.
“Thank you, Sisters. Now, Prince, do you understand the terms of the curse?” The Prince could only look at the women in wonder and horror.
“He’s struck dumb, little sister!” cackled Lucinda.
“Shhh,” reminded Ruby as Circe continued.
“Do you understand the terms?” she asked him again.
“That I’m supposed to turn into some sort of beast if I do not change my ways?” the Prince said, trying to repress a smile.
Circe nodded.
Now it was time for the Prince to laugh. “Poppycock! What sort of trickery is this? I’m to believe you’ve cursed me? Am I supposed to become so frightened that I fool myself into making something dreadful happen? I won’t fall for it, ladies! If indeed you can be called ladies, royal blood or not!”
Circe’s face hardened. The Prince had never seen her like this—so angry, so stern and cold.
“Your castle and its grounds shall also be cursed, then, and everyone within will be forced to share your burden. Nothing but horrors will surround you, from when you look into a mirror to when you sit in your beloved rose garden.”
Lucinda added, “And soon those horrors will be your only scenery.”
“Yes, I see you stuck cowering withindoors.”
“Yes, fearful of leaving your own bedchamber!”
“Yes, yes! Too frightened to show your ugly face to the world outside your castle walls!”
“I see your servants seething with hate, watching your every move from distant shadows, sneaking up on you in the night, just looking at the creature you’ve become.”
“And I see you,” Lucinda said, “wondering if they’ll kill you to free themselves from the curse!”
“Enough! That is but one path he may take! There is one last thing he needs before we go.” Circe looked to Ruby.
“The mirror, please, Ruby.”
Lucinda’s face contorted even more freakishly than imaginable. “Circe, no! Not the mirror.”
“It’s our mirror!”
“Not yours to give away!”
“No, no, no!”
“This is my curse, Sisters, and on my terms. I say he gets the mirror!
“My darling,” Circe continued, “this enchanted mirror will let you see into the outside world. All you need to do is ask the mirror and it will show you what you want to see.”
“I don’t like you giving away our treasures, Circe! That was a gift from a very famous maker of mirrors. It’s quite priceless and very old. It’s a mirror of legends! It was given to us before you were even born.”
“And shall I remind you how you came to possess it?” asked Circe, silencing her sisters.
“Let’s not bore the Prince with our family history, Circe,” said Martha. “He can have the mirror, not only to see the outside world, but to see the hideous creature he’s bound to become.”
“Oh yes! Let him try to break the maidens’ hearts after he’s turned into the beast!” screamed Ruby, with Lucinda and Martha chiming in, “Let him try, let him try, to break their hearts and make them cry!” They were spinning in circles like toy tops, their dresses blossoming about them like mutant flowers in a strange garden, while they chanted their incessant mockery.
“Let him try! Let him try! To break their hearts and make them cry!”
Circe was growing impatient, and the Prince looked as if he was straddling amusement and fear.
“Sisters! Please stop, I beg you!” Circe snapped.
“I’m supposed to take this seriously? Any of this? Really, Circe! Do you think I’m an idiot like your cackling sisters here?”
Before the Prince could say any more, he found himself pressed firmly against the stone wall behind him, Circe’s hand placed tightly around his throat, her voice a hiss like a giant serpent’s.
“Never speak ill of my sisters again! And yes, you’d better take everything I’ve said seriously, and I suggest you commit it to memory, because your life depends on it. The curse is in your hands now. Choose the right path, Prince, change your ways, and you shall be redeemed. Chose cruelty and vanity and you will suffer indeed!”
She released him. He was utterly gobsmacked. Her face was very close to his and full of hate. He felt frightened, really frightened, perhaps for the first t
ime in his young life.
“Do you understand?” she asked again, vehemently, and all he could mutter was “Yes.”
“Come, Sisters, let’s leave him, then. He will choose his own path from here.”
So he did.
In the first few months there was no sign of a curse: no taunting sisters, no beastly visage, and no villainous servants plotting his death. The idea was laughable, really. His loyal servants growing to hate him? Ludicrous! Imagine his beloved Cogsworth or Mrs. Potts wishing for his death—utterly inconceivable! It was pure claptrap!
Nothing of which the sisters spoke came true, and he saw no reason to believe it would. As a result, he did not think he needed to repent, change his ways, or take anything those insane women had to say seriously at all.
Life went on and it was good—as good as it had always been, with Gaston at his side, money in his pockets, and women to fawn over him. What more could he ask for?
But as happy as he was, he couldn’t completely shake the fear that perhaps Circe and her sisters were right. He noticed little changes in his appearance—small things that made him feel his mind might be betraying him and he was somehow falling for the sisters’ ruse.
He had to constantly—obsessively—remind himself that there was no curse. There were only his fears and the sisters’ lies, and he wasn’t about to let either get the better of him.
He was in his bedroom readying himself for a hunting trip with Gaston when the porter came in to let him know his friend had arrived.
“Send him up, then. Unless he wants to take breakfast in the observatory while I finish getting ready.”
The Prince was in fine spirits and found himself feeling better than he had in a long time. But he couldn’t for the life of him remember the porter’s name. A bit concerning, but one of the advantages of being a prince is that no one questions you. So if others were noticing a change in the Prince, they didn’t mention it.
“Are my things packed? Is everything ready for our stalking expedition?” he asked the porter.
“Indeed, my liege, it’s all been loaded. If there’s nothing else that you require, then I shall see to the other gentleman’s things?”
The Prince had to laugh. Gaston a gentleman? Hardly! The porter was too young to remember when Gaston and the Prince had been boys. Some of the older staff would remember. Mrs. Potts would remember, to be sure. She had often recounted old stories about the boys as children, laughing at the memory of them running to the kitchen and pleading with her for sweets after their grand adventures, both of them covered in mud, tracking it throughout the castle, like little boys love to do, making a maid trail after them—a maid who muttered curses under her breath the entire time.
Curses.
Put them out of your mind. Remember something else.
Mrs. Potts.
She loved telling the story of how the boys had convinced themselves the castle grounds had been plagued by an evil dragon. On more than one occasion, the boys went off adventuring all day and were gone well into the night, making everyone sick with worry over what might have befallen them—and the two of them just waltzed right in as happy and gay as could be, without a care in the world, wondering what the fuss was all about.
That was how those boys had been. The Prince wondered how much they’d actually changed, though Mrs. Potts reminded him at every opportunity that both he and Gaston had changed a great deal. She often said she didn’t see much of the little boys she once adored in either of them.
Changed.
He had changed, hadn’t he? And not in the way Mrs. Potts feared. In other ways. She still loved them, though. She couldn’t help herself. She probably even thought of Gaston as a gentleman. She always treated him as such. She saw the best in everyone when she could, and encouraged their friendship when they were young, even though he was the gamekeeper’s son.
“It shouldn’t matter who his father is, young master. He is your friend and has proven to be a very good one at that.” He remembered feeling terrible for letting a thing like status make him reconsider a friendship with Gaston. None of that mattered, not now. Gaston had his own lands and people to work them—the Prince had seen to that—and that life when they were so young, when Gaston lived with his father in the stable quarters, it all seemed so far away and long ago.
Gaston’s very voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Prince! Why are you standing there daydreaming when you should be readying yourself? We have a long journey ahead of us.”
“I was remembering when we were young, Gaston. Recalling our earlier adventures. Do you remember the time you saved my life in the…”
Gaston’s face hardened. “You know I don’t like to talk about that, Prince! Must you always remind me that I am not your equal?”
“That wasn’t my aim, dear friend.”
“Nevertheless, it is the result.”
The Prince felt scolded.
Gaston seemed to be lost in his own thoughts now, musing over the large portrait of the Prince hanging over the fireplace. “When did you sit for this portrait? How long ago was it? Five years?”
“It was finished only a quarter of a year ago. You remember, it was done by that wildly eccentric painter. He called himself the Maestro, remember? He seemed to live in another world altogether with his pretty speeches about preserving our youth and making time stand still through the magic of depiction.”
“I do! Yes, he was very…uh, interesting.”
“Interesting? You wanted to toss him out the nearest window, if I recall!”
The two laughed but Gaston seemed to be preoccupied with thoughts other than those about strange painters and their proclamations of preserving a moment in time.
“I suppose there is something to his insane ramblings, though. I do seem much changed since this was painted. Look, around the eyes in the painting. There is no sign of lines, but if you see here, it does look as though I’ve aged more than five years.”
“You sound like a woman, Prince, worrying about lines around the eyes! Next you’ll be wondering what color petticoat looks best with a blue dress. Shall I inquire with your fairy godmother?”
The Prince laughed, but it wasn’t genuine. Gaston continued, “We have better things to do than waste the day clucking away like a couple of hens. Meet me in the observatory for breakfast when you’re finished getting ready.”
“Yes, feel free to start without me. I’m sure Mrs. Potts is in a tizzy that it’s taken us this long to get down there.”
The portrait was still bothering him. How had his eyes become so lined in just a few months? Was it possible they had looked like this at the time and the painter wished to compliment him by making him seem younger? No, the Maestro was very specific about preserving that moment in time. Making it as pure and realistic as possible. Freezing a moment that could never be diminished or altered, preserving it for the generations so they might evoke something of his memory once he was long gone. So the man had said, almost word for word. It seemed contrary to his annoying speeches and proclamations for him to have painted the Prince any differently than he had appeared at the time. So Gaston was right? Had he aged five years in just over three months? Or was Gaston simply being mean spirited because he’d reminded him of when they were young?
Could it be…? No. But what if…what if Circe’s curse was real?
Then he remembered the sisters’ mirror. He had tucked it away the night the fiendish harpies gave it to him, and hadn’t given it a second thought. Their words started to ring in his ears and he couldn’t take his mind off the hellish thing. It will show you as the beast you are bound to become! He walked over to the mantel. Sitting on top was a voluminous tortoiseshell cat with narrowed yellow eyes lined in black. She looked down on him, scrutinizing him as he looked for the button that opened the secret compartment within the fireplace mantel. The fireless pit
was flanked by two griffons with ruby-red eyes that sparkled in the morning light.
He pressed one of the eyes inward, and it recessed into the griffon’s skull. Each griffon had a crest on its chest; the crest on the griffon to the right popped out, revealing the compartment containing the mirror.
The Prince just stood there looking at it. The mirror had landed facedown when he tossed it in. He stared at its back side. It was seemingly harmless, a simple silver hand mirror almost entirely black now from tarnish. He reached in, grabbing the mirror by its handle. It was cold in his hand, and he fancied he could feel the evil of the sisters penetrating him by his simply touching it.
Fancy.
He held it to his chest for a moment, not wanting to look at himself, wondering if this was folly. He was letting the sisters get to him. He had promised himself he wouldn’t surrender to fears and superstitions. Yet he found himself wanting to look into the mirror. And he was worried about what he might see.
“Enough of this foolishness!” He gathered his courage, lifted the mirror, and looked into it unflinchingly, determined to face his fears. At first glance he didn’t seem much changed. His heart felt lighter and he indeed felt foolish for letting the sisters’ threats invade his thoughts.
“Look closer, Prince.” He dropped the mirror and was afraid he had broken it. Though it might have been a blessing if he had. He was sure it was Lucinda’s voice he’d heard taunting from the black ether, or wherever she deigned to dwell. It was Hell itself for all he knew. Picking up the mirror with a shaking hand, he took a second look. This time he did see deep lines around his eyes. Gaston was right: he looked a good five years older after just a few months! The lines made his face look cruel. Heartless. All the things Circe said he was.
The Beast Within Page 3
