In the dappled light of the forest, nestled between the roots of her favorite tree, Mira wept.
She had not, these last few days. She had not allowed herself to, not sure how she could explain it to her family, who would surely see. But now her work was done for a moment, and she was alone, in her private hollow in the woods, where no one would search for a quarter hour or more.
A twig snapped.
Mira looked up. Standing before her was a great beast, seven feet tall at least, perhaps ten if one counted the antlers. He had glossy dark fur, and a snout that looked somehow like both a bear’s and a deer’s. Horrifying and majestic, like a forest god of old.
“Hello,” he said.
She stared at him for a moment before recovering her manners; she had not expected him to speak. “Oh! Hello.”
“You’re upset,” he said.
“Um. Yes.” She did not want to explain the situation to a monster in the woods. And given the typical result of encountering monsters in the woods, her current problems were likely over.
Though not, admittedly, in the way she’d have chosen.
“Before—before you eat me, or take me away to serve you forever in fairyland, or whatever it is you’re planning to do, could we—could we have some witnesses, please? I don’t mind what you do to me, as long as someone sees it.”
If she was taken by fairies, or something convincingly like them, the crown would make restitutions to her parents. And fairies could do horrible, horrible things, but at least it wouldn’t—wouldn’t be—
The creature stared at her for what felt like a very long time. She considered and discarded the possibility of running; he was terrifying, but so was Ralph, and the future that awaited her.
“You want to get away,” he said at last, half a question. It sounded like an offer.
“Oh, yes,” Mira said, her need for escape overwhelming fear and reason both. But any escape he offered her could only be a trap. “But I can’t. My family is depending on my marriage. We need the bride price desperately.” Or, failing that, the crown’s restitution.
“And do you want to be married?”
She thought of Ralph, of his bright smile and soft hands. She thought of Ralph three days ago, when he—
“No,” she admitted.
The creature nodded. “What is your bride price? I will pay it double, and take you away, and you needn’t be my bride.”
She studied the monster, his deep black eyes and soft snout, his large paws. He had no reason to help her, and she had no reason to trust him. He couldn’t lie, if he was a fairy, but she thought that he was not—they usually looked lovely and human—and other magical creatures could, as far as she knew, tell as many lies as they liked. He likely wasn’t lying when he said she wouldn’t be his bride, but only because she was more likely to be his dinner or his slave.
She could not stay here. Not like this, not with Ralph. And a fairy restitution would not be nearly as much money as double her bride price.
It was a foolish choice. But she couldn’t stay here. And his face, for all it was monstrous, looked kind.
“You’ll have to speak with my father,” she said.
He nodded.
“I am Mira. What shall I call you?”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. “I don’t have a name,” he said at last. “You may call me Beast; it is what I am.”
~
The Beast spoke with her father in the doorway; his antlers prevented him from fitting inside. Not, Mira thought, that her father would have been inclined to let him in regardless. He closed the door on him, rudely, to discuss the offer.
“You can’t mean to marry a monster.”
“You can’t mean to turn down the bride price he offers, not with Mama sickly, and your only son still in diapers.” It would be a decade before Henry could truly contribute to the household, and the doubled bride price was far more than her own contributions were worth. She and Anna tried, but they had not the strength to do any of the things that would truly bring in money.
“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.”
She loved her family. She hated Ralph more.
“He has bewitched you. Mira, child. He’s a monster. He’s—”
“He’s bigger and stronger than us. And perhaps he has bewitched me; I don’t know if he has magic, but certainly he’s made of it. If he wants me he will have me, willing or no. Accept the bride price, and make it as right as you can.”
She walked past him to open the door. “If you will bring the bride price tomorrow, my father will send me with you then,” she told the Beast. “May I walk you out?”
She looped an arm through his—the angle was awkward, with his height—and led him back toward her hollow.
“I’ve no intention of forcing you,” he said, the clear anxiety in his voice at odds with his monstrous appearance.
“I know,” Mira said, mostly honest. “It was only to make my father agree.”
His voice was as kind as his face, and it could be a trap, but why bother to set one? He could have taken her easily enough without all this.
“You needn’t come with me,” he said. “You can have the bride price, and stay here—I’ve no need for the money.”
It was a very kind offer. She would never have thought to expect such kindness from a monster, never would have thought she could feel so irrationally safe with an enormous, alarming creature who by all rights ought not to exist.
She had to go with him. The money was not enough. No money would ever be enough. It would buy her time, but Ralph would persist.
“I will go with you,” she said, “if you will have me.”
“Of course.”
They had reached the hollow. She released his arm, and rolled her shoulder to calm the strain of the angle. “I’ll see you in the morning, then?”
“In the morning,” he agreed. He turned, and stepped through the trees, and was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.
~
He couldn’t remember his name. He thought it was part of the curse, though he wasn’t quite sure. He hoped it was part of the curse. He hoped it was something that had been taken from him, rather than something he’d been careless enough to lose.
His memory wasn’t good. Like his body, it made him feel less like a man every day, farther and farther from whoever he used to be. But a name seemed the sort of thing he ought to have hung onto, even as the rest faded away.
He thought he used to be a man, with dark brown hair and a nose that wasn’t quite straight. He thought he used to have a little brother he carried on his shoulders, and a hunting hound who was quite terrible at hunting, and liked to sleep in his bed. He thought he attended balls, and hunts, and history lessons.
He knew he had a name.
Just not what it was.
He knew he used to be shorter, not because he remembered it, but because even now, he forgot to duck, and banged his antlers into things.
He knew something bad had happened, something other than becoming a monster, something worse. He didn’t know what, not because he couldn’t remember but because he refused to, because he spent long hours trying to recall the shape of his maybe-brother’s face, or any other details of his life before, but when the tiniest hints of the bad thing surfaced, he shoved them down, found a distraction, thought of anything else.
The memories came back, he thought, in nightmares, but he woke remembering only dread and sick fear, and not the details.
He knew because the look in Mira’s eyes when she spoke of marriage, when he offered an escape, felt so achingly familiar.
He hadn’t meant to invite a young woman to live with him. He hadn’t meant to be there at all. He’d been in that wild area behind the palace that used to be a garden, and then he had been in front of a crying girl.
The halls of the palace wound and changed without his say, but usually the grounds didn’t wander about without permission.
He decided to blame that on the curse, too.
Some days it felt like a living thing, writhing beneath his skin.
He’d made no attempts to break it. Not, at least, since his memory started going foggy.
The curse, he thought, was growing restless. It mustn’t be any fun, being a curse whose victim lies down and takes it.
If he didn’t try to break the curse, he couldn’t fail. If he didn’t fail, he would suffer only in the same old ways, no fresh entertainment for the one who cursed him.
(He thought it was a woman. He didn’t like thinking any harder about it than that.)
Also, the curse had made him larger and stronger and much more frightening, and that was not entirely a bad thing.
He had been boring. Content, even. So the curse had presented him an opportunity to be broken, since he refused to seek one out.
They needn’t fall in love, just because she was here. It seemed quite unlikely, really.
A woman was going to be living with him. He thought—he thought he used to wear clothes. Maybe he should do that again.
He didn’t look much like a man, and nothing showed through the fur. But still, if one was sharing a space with a young woman, and she was escaping an unwanted marriage, and her father seemed to think this was a marriage, then one ought to wear clothes.
He hoped he could find some. The curse might think it rather funny, forcing him into close proximity with a woman, nude.
Or, more likely, the palace might think it a waste of time to produce for him something so unnecessary.
He was going to be living with a woman.
She had touched him.
He thought of her little brown hand on his large brown arm. He tried to remember the last time another person touched him, and couldn’t.
(A silver white hand, cupping his cheek, his face changing beneath it, her smile like—)
He shook his head. He couldn’t.
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