Monstrous Beauty, Page 2

  When he is halfway up, not yet to the window but a great distance from the ground, the strands begin to move.

  For one frozen instant, he believes it is the wind, stirring the maiden’s hair. But no breath of air disturbs the moonlight clearing, and a heartbeat later he cannot deny the truth. The silver strands are moving of their own accord.

  They wrap about his wrists and arms, twining around his throat while the shadows hiss in malicious approval. He cries out again, this time in fear, and draws his dagger from its sheath, slashing at his bonds, heedless of the risk of falling; from the tower window above comes a shriek of furious, alien pain, and the dagger is wrenched from his hand. He is trapped, entangled, a helpless puppet, and the tresses of hair slide about his body like sinuous fingers, caressing, possessing. The strands around his throat tighten ever more as he is dragged upward, choking off his screams, sending blackness and spots of light dancing across his vision, and his final sight is of the inhumanly perfect face above him, waiting, hungering, ready to welcome him in.

  Notes on “Tower in Moonlight”

  The Wood, the Bridge, the House

  The shadows writhe and twist as she skips down the path, singing to herself. If she turns her head, there will be nothing there, and so she does not; she keeps her eyes fixed on the path ahead, on the dappled sunlight, not the shadows between. She does not listen to the voices that whisper from the dark.

  She has come this way many times before.

  But this time is different. This time, clouds begin to veil the sun, and the light’s vibrance fades. The shadows creep in. Her steps quicken, the faster to leave the wood, but then in the growing murk something slips across the path, and she stumbles to a halt. Now, for the first time, she turns her head and looks in fear.

  Shapes move through the shadows, indistinctly seen, and her hands grip her basket until the wicker-work cuts into her skin.

  She moves on, but more slowly, ever looking over her shoulder. There are words in the whispers, now, words she tries not to hear, laughing at her, telling her she is slow, so slow, too slow, why don’t you run, little girl? Won’t help you to run, but oh, it would be fine.

  She should run, but she cannot. Fear shackles her legs.

  On an ordinary day she would have reached her destination well before nightfall, but the darkness is rising early, and for all that she is still on the path she feels she has lost her way. When the little bridge appears among the trees, she sobs with relief. Almost there. Almost there.

  But first she must cross the bridge, and she fears what might lie beneath it, in the shadows between bridge and water. There are tales, after all, and while this bridge has long been a familiar friend, today nothing is familiar, and nothing is a friend.

  Her feet will not move.

  She must move. She must. Whatever may lie beneath the bridge, the wood holds worse; she is sure of it. And safety lies just beyond the bridge.

  So she gathers up her courage, takes a deep breath, and with a scream she darts forward, flying over the little wooden bridge as fast as she can go. On the other side she does not stop running; she careens down the path, basket jolting against her hip, around the bend and into the open garden before her grandmother’s house, which holds the last of the light.

  Before it can die out and leave her in darkness, she pounds on the door, gasping “Grandma, Grandma, let me in!”

  The door opens, and she stumbles into the firelit embrace of the house.

  Her legs give out. She collapses onto the rag rug, panting for breath, her basket forgotten beside her. The fire crackles and dances; the shadows dance in reply.

  “How wonderful to see you, my dear.”

  The voice is a whisper, a rasp; Grandma has been ill. The sound reminds the girl of her purpose here, reminds her of her basket; she picks it up with shaking hands, disentangles herself from the red cloak that has wrapped itself about her legs, and stands. “Grandma, I have brought you bread and fruit from my m . . .”

  Her words trail off as she sees her grandmother. The illness has taken its toll on her, and the firelight is not kind; her skin seems to sag on her face, like an ill-fitting dress, and her eyes are dark hollows.

  “How very kind of you,” Grandma whispers, “to bring me such treats.”

  The girl swallows; her throat feels very dry. “Grandma—what dark eyes you have.”

  “I have been very ill, my dear.”

  The firelight dances, and the patterns tied into the rug twist and snake.

  Grandma reaches for the basket, but the girl grips it tighter, staring. “Grandma—what long nails you have.”

  “I have been waiting a long time, my dear.”

  Behind Grandma, in the shadows, the cold laughter echoes. Waiting. Watching.

  Grandma smiles at the girl.

  The basket drops from her nerveless fingers; the food spills out, lost, and one of Grandma’s shoes crushes grapes to pulp as she steps forward, hands out, reaching.

  “Grandma,” the girl whispers, almost soundlessly. “What sharp teeth you have.”

  “I am very hungry, my dear.”

  The shadows rise up around them, living and cold, as the firelight dies. It is a long way to grandmother’s house, through a wood that is not empty at all; the only ones who hear the screams drink them in like wine, sighing in pleasure.

  When dawn comes, the shadows retreat, leaving behind an empty house and an old, wrinkled skin on the floor, discarded like an ill-fitting dress.

  Notes on “The Wood, the Bridge, the House”

  Kiss of Life

  In faraway lands, the tale is a romantic one. She sleeps in her tower, in the castle surrounded by thorns, awaiting a prince who is brave and true of heart, for only the kiss of such a man will end her slumber and bring her back to life. She has waited for many centuries, they say, and many princes have gone, fighting their way through the dark wood and climbing the thousand stairs to the tower room, but none have been pure and noble enough to wake her.

  Some tellers say that, distraught by their failure and this judgment of their character, the princes fling themselves from the tower window and fall to their deaths below.

  If that were true, the courtyard of the sleeping castle would be littered with bones.

  Closer to home, the stories change. The princes, they say, do not die of broken hearts and wounded pride. They do not reach the tower room at all. Long before they have a chance to lay their mouths against the perfect rosebud lips, long before they catch sight of the graceful, slender hands, they fall prey to the creatures that wait beneath the thorny boughs of the wood. And if they survive their trials there, then they meet their ends at the hands (or claws, or jaws) of the beings that walk the halls of the darkened keep, more foul by far than their forest-dwelling kin. And if they win their way past these as well, they perish in battle against the guardian who stands on the stairs of the tower—but most never make it that far. The curse on the castle and its sleeping resident was placed by a powerful, jealous sorceress (or fairy, or stepmother-queen), and she vowed, as she was slain by knights, that her victim should never wake; and her blood flowed out and became the monsters of the wood and the hall, her malevolent spirit the guardian on the stairs.

  In the village that once served the keep, they tell another tale, and that is the darkest of all.

  They tell their tale to all who pass through, but most princes and knights and wandering adventurers dismiss their words as the superstitions of credulous peasants (forgetting that their own peasants’ tales set them on their road to begin with), or else assume that the villagers do not want the curse lifted—for then they would lose the one thing that distinguishes their collection of squalid hovels from the thousand others like it.

  The idealistic young prince who approaches the wood now never even had the opportunity to disregard the peasants’ tales, for he took a vow, when he departed on his quest, to speak with no one until his task was done. A foolish vow, which lengthened his road by months a
nd leagues; he searched in many wrong places, all unknowing, before finding his way here. He is not quite so young now, and his idealism has tarnished along the way. But at last he has found the wood, and beyond it lies the castle, and in the castle’s topmost tower sleeps the lady whom he seeks.

  He rides into the wood, his sword unsheathed.

  The impassable forest of thorns disappoints him; it is dark and overgrown, to be sure, and thickly populated with briars, but the spines on these are not the sword-length blades he had been led to expect. He makes his way through with no more difficulty than an ordinary tangled forest might give him, and sees no horrors along the way. There is no sign, in all the wood, of any prince or knight slain here before him.

  The villagers go blackberrying in the wood every year; they could have told him it was safe.

  On the other side of the wood he finds the castle, walls cloaked in ivy, gate hanging open. Sword still in hand, the prince steps through. The courtyard stones are cracked by frost, and grass has grown between them, but there are no scattered bones, no fallen blades, left by despairing suitors. Above stands the tower, the tiny panes of its window glinting in the light—shut against the elements, not left open by one leaping to his death.

  The villagers never venture as far as this, but they know the courtyard is clear.

  The great door of the keep also stands open, and dead leaves have drifted into the hall. They crunch dryly under the prince’s boots as he walks in, the only sound he can hear. The light is failing now, the day having passed while he navigated the wood, and so he pauses to work flint and steel, until a spark catches in the torch he brought with him—he knew there would be darkness. By the torch’s flickering light, he searches the corners for threats, but finds nothing.

  The villagers could have told him that.

  He begins to question this all as he looks for the stairs. Where have all the others gone? Is it mere fiction, that men have come here before him? Could it be he is the first? All the stories agree that the questers have never returned, but perhaps they never reached this place at all. Perhaps they perished far from here; the road is, after all, dangerous. Or perhaps they came, failed to wake the sleeper, and refused to return home with their shame.

  Perhaps there is no sleeper.

  But he never asked the villagers for answers.

  He finds the stairs and climbs, half-wondering if there is a guardian lurking here who will devour him, bones and boots and all, half-wondering if the tower room will be empty when he arrives.

  Nothing meets him on the stairs.

  As he opens the heavy door at the top of the stairs, he is of two minds. One envisions triumph and fame, the tale of how a youngest son, lacking any hope of inheritance at home, won a beautiful princess and restored her castle—their castle—to its former glory. The other fears mockery, the jeers of those around him when they learn he spent years on a foolish, pointless quest.

  All thought vanishes when he opens the door.

  The dusty, half-rotted curtains around the bed stir slightly as the air is disturbed. The prince scarcely sees them, eyes fixed instead on the figure lying atop the mouldering coverlet, hands neatly clasped across her breast. Amidst the decay, her hair shines like incorruptible gold. Her long lashes lie against her cheeks, hinting at the beauty they hide, and her perfect rosebud lips await his gentle kiss.

  There is a sleeper, and there is a curse—and the villagers know well the nature of both.

  The prince drops his torch to the floor, where it dies swiftly, unnaturally. In the sudden gloom, he walks toward her, boots automatically lifting over the debris that blocks his way. He spares no thought for the debris; all his attention is fixed on her. She is a beauty beyond compare, and his skin aches, as though too small to contain his adoration. Trembling in anticipation of the sight of her eyes, he bends over and gives her the kiss of life.

  An instant later, he stumbles backward, no longer recognizable as the idealistic young prince who set out on a noble quest, nor even as the older, more travel-weary prince who climbed the tower stairs. He is scarcely recognizable as human. His skin has shrunk tight against his bones and his muscles have withered away; he collapses to the ground, a skeletal, desiccated thing, dying among the scattered bones and rusted blades of all the other brave young men the villagers could not persuade or prevent from coming to this tower.

  The sleeper sighs once, but does not wake.

  The curse still holds, for which the villagers give thanks every morning. Her prison of sleep still contains her. But one day it will fail; one day, she will absorb enough life from others to open her terrible eyes, to rise from her bed and walk again. On that day, the skies will darken, and she will come forth from the castle once more, sweeping the bones of her suitors before her, bestowing her ravenous kiss on all who cannot flee her path.

  But that day is not today. For now, she sleeps, waiting for her next kiss.

  Notes on “Kiss of Life”

  Waiting for Beauty

  He wakes before dawn to prepare her breakfast. The spoons and pot-handles are clumsy in his curving claws, but the servants all left long ago, and so he has learned to make do. The breakfast is not what he would wish it to be; getting supplies is difficult these days. He found two eggs in a lark’s nest yesterday, though, that he cracks with painstaking care, scrambling them because anything else requires more dexterity than he possesses. There is meat, as always, and bread he stole for her.

  The claws of his feet click against the stone as he hurries from the kitchens, tray balanced in his enormous hands. The sounds echo off the walls where the tapestries have long since fallen away. It took an army of servants to maintain this place, once; he cannot manage it on his own. Even the small areas he keeps are almost too much for him. The kitchens; one of the parlors; her bedroom, of course. The garden. Everywhere else has been given over to dust and neglect, surrendered to the dominion of spiders and mice. But he makes these few places as pleasant for her as he can.

  He tiptoes into her bedroom, comical in his caution. She does not stir at the sound. Laying the breakfast tray on the bedside table, he averts his eyes from her motionless form. It would not be proper for him to look. She should have a lady’s maid; she did, for a time. But the woman had been the first of the servants to leave. Now they are alone.

  Drawing back the brocade curtains, he says in a gentle voice, “Beauty, it’s time to rise.”

  He helps her dress, eyes shut tight as he fumbles for buttons and sleeves, moving her like an overgrown, listless doll. The gown is one he purchased for her, when he had servants to go into town for him. The figured muslin is decorated with a delicate embroidery of roses. She was a village girl, before; he had to teach her the distinction between day dresses and evening ones. But he spared no expense on her behalf: she had lovely gowns, expensive furnishings, everything she might desire. Before the servants left, her food had been exquisite to match. But they could not live with her, they murmured, and one by one they fled.

  She does not touch her breakfast, again, and it worries him. Guiding her from the room, he apologizes for the fare; he apologizes, though he cannot think what he might do to improve it. He would move heaven and earth to make her happy, but he cannot leave this castle or its grounds, the woods that lie to the south. The villagers would kill him on sight. He must make do with what he can hunt or gather, or occasionally steal from the nearest houses. And if she continues in this manner, she will simply fade away. When was the last time she ate?

  He leads her to the parlor, where he sings for her entertainment. Harp strings snap under his claws, and piano keys are too slick, but he has a fine bass voice. When noon comes, he slips away to capture and devour a plump rabbit, then returns to her with an offering of ripe cherries. She does not touch these, either.

  Tomorrow, he tells himself. Tomorrow she will be hungry.

  In the afternoon, they go to the rose garden, where she sits quietly in the sun. He has a new book of poetry to read to her today
, one he has been saving for some time. He judges—he hopes—that now is the time to share it.

  Turning the pages with careful claws, he reads the romantic poems to her, one by one, in a rich growl that holds a wealth of emotion within.

  In the hot summer sunlight, she sits without a word. A fly lands on her cheek, and she does not brush it away. A stench fills the air that the roses cannot mask. The servants did their best for her, trying to make her happy, praying their master could be delivered from his curse. Some of them stayed even after he drew her from the pond at the base of the garden—but not for long. Their hopes died with her.

  But his live on. The truth cannot be borne. And so, day after day, the Beast cooks meals she does not eat, sings songs she does not hear, and reads poetry to her in the rose garden, waiting for Beauty to love him.

  Notes on “Waiting for Beauty”

  Afterword

  Some short story sets are planned; others happen by accident.

  This is one of the latter sort. It began with what I thought was a one-off idea—a vaguely Lovecraftian retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood”—but within three months it had spawned three more stories in a similar vein. (The remainder sauntered in over the next two and a half years.) At first their connection was more stylistic than thematic; they were all fairy tales, and all written in a more poetic and ornate kind of prose than I usually employ. But over time—specifically, round about the point where I wrote a story I thought was for the set, and then realized it didn’t actually fit—I noticed there was a common thread running through them all.

  In academia (which is where I was when I wrote these), there’s a concept referred to as the “monstrous feminine.” It doesn’t simply mean “a female monster;” it has to do with the ways in which femininity itself is treated as a source of horror. The idea was given that name by (I think) Barbara Creed, but the concept goes all the way back to Aristotle, who described the woman as “a failed and botched male.” It’s the idea of marked and unmarked categories, Self and Other. If male is the unmarked default, the Self—and that’s been the pattern in Western society—then female is the marked category, the Other. And the Other is scary.