Mira weeps.
She has not, these last few days. She has not let herself. But now she’s alone, in her private hollow in the woods, and no one will search for her for a quarter hour, at least.
A twig snaps.
Mira looks up. Standing before her is a great beast, seven feet tall at least, his antlers adding another foot or two. He has glossy dark fur, and a snout the looks somehow like both a bear’s and a deer’s. Horrifying and majestic, like a forest god of old.
“Hello,” he says.
She stares at him for a long moment before recovering her manners. “Oh! Hello.”
“You’re upset.”
“Um. Yes.” She really does not want to explain the situation to a monster in the woods.
He stares at her for nearly as long as she stared at him, when he first spoke. “You want to get away,” he says at last, half a question. It sounds like an offer.
“Oh, yes,” Mira says, her need for escape overwhelming both reason and fear. “But I can’t. my family is depending on my marriage. We need the bride price desperately.”
“And do you want to be married?”
She thinks of Ralph, of his bright smile and soft hands. She thinks of Ralph three days ago, when he— “No.”
The creature nods. “What is your bride price? I will pay it double, and take you away, and you needn’t be my bride.”
She studies the monster. He has no reason to help her, and she has no reason to trust him. He may be lying, about her not being his bride. He may plan to eat her instead.
She cannot stay here.
“You’ll have to speak with my father,” she says.
He nods.
“I am Mira. What shall I call you?”
He doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I don’t have a name,” he says. “You may call me Beast; it is what I am.”
-
The Beast speaks with her father in the doorway; his antlers prevent him from fitting inside. Not, Mira thinks, that her father would be inclined to let him in regardless. He closes the door on him, rudely, to discuss his offer.
“You can’t mean to marry a monster.”
“You can’t mean to turn down the bride price he offers, not with Mother sickly, and your only son still in diapers.”
“Young Ralph has—”
“Ralph will offer you half what the Beast has. We’ve made him no promises. Take the better offer.”
“I am not so desperate for gold that I would—”
“I’ll not marry Ralph, Father. Accept the Beast’s offer, or I’ll go with him anyway, and bring shame on the family.”
“He has bewitched you. Mira, child. He’s a monster. He’s—”
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