PRINCESS BEAST (8 page)

"You want the warmth of a grieving mother's heart.  How about warmth of the sole!"  Beauty growls, makes a bounding leap and lands both huge, leathery-bottomed feet on the rosebush.  She stomps twice more for good measure, sniffs and takes the road to the left.  The scent of Death grows stronger and in a moment, Beauty spies the old man wrapped in a horsehair blanket loping down the road.  She pours on the speed, her great beast legs covering five feet per stride.  Death turns slowly, his sunken eyes pop, his shriveled mouth drops open, and Beauty is flying through the air screaming like a Ninja.  Death is on his back, pinned to the ground by 300 pounds of seething mother-beast.  Beauty pulls back her thin black lips, baring her three rows of fangs. 

"Listen to me, old man Death.  My daughter is in this land. She looks just like me only smaller.  I'm going to find her and take her home.  If you go near her, I will know, and I'll find you again.  I'll break every bone in your body, starting with your fingers, one by one.  Then I'll gouge your eyes out and stuff them in your mouth." Beauty strokes Death's cheek with her sharp talons. "And while you're choking, I'll tear your body into strips, then scatter them over the earth end to end.  Do you understand me?"

Death nods his quivering old head, and Beauty stands.  She starts down the road, stops, turns about and looses her most ferocious roar.

And near the city of Odense, halfway across the island of Fyn, Holger the Dane raises his hoary head and bellows his battle cry.

 

* * *

 

An ominous crack wakes Rune, and she has time to utter, "Oh-oh," before the bough breaks and she falls to a lower branch. She stretches, gathers a bunch of oak leaves and chews them while ruminating on what to do next.
How was it Helga changed into a girl and stayed that way
, Rune thinks, trying to recall Helga's words. 
I remember, she climbed a tree and stayed there all day.  When she climbed down, she washed her hands, made the sign of the cross and said, Jesus Christ.

And so Rune spends hours in the oak tree, saying
Jesus Christ
every now and then for good measure.  Beauty, now reaching the bog, believes she will reach her daughter before the day is done.  However, she does not realize that a 300-pound beast cannot walk across a sphagnum bog.  What appears to her to be a vast moss bed, crumbles with her first step and she plunges into the bog water like a cannon ball.

By the time Rune climbs down from the oak tree, Beauty has struggled through only one fourth of the swampy layers of floating moss and waterlogged debris.  Rune washes her hands, holds two sticks together to form a cross, and says
Jesus Christ
with the utmost gravity.  She closes her eyes and waits for the transformation to begin.  Ten minutes pass, twenty, an hour and Rune drops the sticks, runs to the shore and jumps into the Little Belt.

 

* * *

 

 

Chapter Eight

Fun In Fyn

 

November 1st, a temperate autumn day in Andersen Land, and a maritime breeze greets Rune as she shakes the water from her fur and surveys the Island of Fyn. At this moment, in a burst of adolescent euphoria, everything is right with the world.  Rune is supremely confident that she will reach Copenhagen in a week or so, that she will transform into the fairy tale beauty she saw within the mirror, and that she will return before Christmas to win back the heart of Hans the Hedgehog prince. Looking east, she spies a road leading upward, follows the road and yes! There is a castle, a grand castle. There could be anything in there, a princess, a prince, a king and queen . .
. shoes would be nice and beautiful clothes, a satin gown and golden crown for Princess Rune to wear once she has transformed.

She is about to step onto the shore when a ball, floating in the water, bumps into her shin.  It's leather-casing flaps off a seam, exposing the water-swollen cork interior.  Rune reaches for the ball, and the ball speaks:  "Oh, well, fine--just great.  My end will come in the jaws of a sea monster.  And will I have the luck of Noah?  Will I be spat out to safety and be reunited with a loving family?  Noooo--I'll be digested and be expelled as shreds in a pile of beast poop."

"Creechy," Rune says.  "It would take an idiot of some sort to swallow a ball.  Would you like me to set you on the beach to dry?"

The ball rolls over, its flap dangling like a pouting lip.  "What manner of monster are you?"

Because Rune is feeling magnanimous, she doesn't snatch the ball and throw it farther out to sea.  "I am not a monster," she politely replies.  "I'm most probably enchanted royalty.  I'm going to Copenhagen to hasten my transformation."

"Thank God!  At last someone of my own caliber has come, someone I need not be ashamed to converse with.  Listen, are you married or engaged?  I may not look like much now, but some drying out and a few stitches and I will be as beautiful as the day I was made.  I came from Copenhagen; I know my way around the city.  I swear I would be a worthy wife and . . ."

"Hold your flap," Rune interrupts.  "My name is Rune.  I'm a girl.  You're a ball.  Besides, once my transformation is complete, I'll return to my home and marry my sweetheart, Hans."

"Darn it!  I should have married that top when I had the chance," the ball curses.  Its mouth lops sadly to the side, and Rune lifts it from the water and carries it to the beach. 

Although she's eager to continue her journey, she can't resist a taking a moment to lay on her back in the sand, gaze at the blue sky, gulls soaring overhead, the sound of the waves falling sweet as bagpipes on her ears.

"Oh, I can feel my skin tightening already," the ball squeals.  "While you're resting, let me tell you my story . . . "

"For it is a good one and every word is true," Rune drones.

"Ja, it is.  I doubt you're a princess, being as rude as you are, but I'll tell you my tale anyway.  A long time ago, I lay in a drawer of toys next to top.  He said we should be engaged.  Well, I was a refined young lady made of morocco leather, and I wouldn't dignify his sleazy suggestion with an answer.  Next day, the top got a new coat of red and yellow paint, and he said we'd make a fine pair.  I told him that my parents were a pair of morocco slippers and that I have cork inside me.  He said he was made by the mayor, carved from mahogany.  Still, I refused him because I thought I was almost engaged to a swallow.  Every time I bounced in the air, he stuck his head out of the nest and asked, Will you?  Will you?"

Rune puckers and imitates precisely the sound of the swallow. “"The call of the swallow," she says and cuffs her ear to remove some water.

The ball creaks, "Oh, this is marvelous.  The sun is drying my cork too.  Would you please roll me over?"

Rune obliges with flick of her talon.

"Thanks ever so much.  I told the top I would never forget him, and he answered crabbishly that it wouldn't make any difference.  The next day when I was taken out of the drawer, I was bounced so high into the sky I looked like a bird, and I disappeared from view.  The top thought I was in the swallow's nest being married.  I wish that had been true.  The more the top thought about me, the more he was in love with me.  And because he couldn't have me, he wanted me all the more, even though I had preferred the swallow.  Can you make sense of that?" the ball asks.

Rune flops over onto her stomach to allow the sand to warm her belly and chest.  She knows precisely the conundrum the ball explained, but she's not about to share confidentialities with a hunk of cork and leather.

"Years passed and I became an old love memory to the top--years I spent not happily wed to the swallow, but lying in the gutter I'd bounced into.  One day, after the top had been given a fresh coat of gold paint, he jumped into the gutter where I lay alongside dirt, leaves and debris.  The top, with his fine gilding, looked around and said, What a lot of pak!"

"What's pak?" Rune asks.

"Riffraff, the scum of society.  Well, I spoke right up and said, Thank God, at last someone of one's own kind has come.  Don't you recognize me?  Although it's hard to see how fine I once was.  I was about to marry a swallow when I fell into this gutter.  Here I've lain for five years and that's a long time for a young girl. You loved me once, you can love me again, I said.  At that moment, a maid came to throw out the garbage and she said,
Hurrah!  Here's the golden top
.  And as her hand wrapped round the top, he said,
No, I cannot love you again; one gets over it when your beloved has lain in a gutter and oozed for five years; one doesn’t even recognize her when you meet.
  Then he was gone with the maid.  Five more years have passed and I've been kicked from gutter to gutter, washed into rivers, then out to sea."

Her sense of euphoria is overcome by a sense of urgency, and Rune jumps to her feet.  "Can you tell me the quickest way to cross this island?" she asks the ball.

"Carry me safely away from shore through those trees yonder, and I'll show you," the ball replies. 

Rune picks up the ball and walks through the sparse stand of trees.  Clearing the trees, she sees a town, and in the center of the town runs a road.

"The village of Middelfart," says the ball, "and that road will take you through Odense straight over to its end at Nyborg. From there you can swim across the Great Belt then you will have a week’s walk to Copenhagen.  If you take me along with, I can be your guide."

Rune considers the offer a sound one; not only can she use help navigating this land, but the company would be a plus.  "Okay, but first I want to go to that castle.  If I'm going to be a princess when I transform, I want to be familiar with how royalty lives."

As beast and ball begin their jaunt up the road, the ground trembles beneath them. “Holger the Dane! The ball screams and buries itself in Rune’s fur. Rune spies a figure running toward the Little Belt’s shore. He throws off his iron armor; he is enormous and strong, his upper arms and calves bulging muscle. His white beard flows behind him on either side of his waist. He is dressed in a tunic and carries a giant shield and sword. He raises the sword high, shouts, “Curtana” and dives into the Little Belt.

 

* * *

 

Elora the enchantress wearing a black, white and orange harlequin cat suit shouts from the west balcony of the Deco Palace, "Go home!" Below her the Samhain bonfire sends up its last plume of smoke.  Scattered about the grounds are the remnants of last night's festivities:  smashed pumpkins, a dozen overturned cauldrons, the chewed bones of BBQ swan and Buffalo wings, discarded blue point oyster shells, a Druid's cloak dangling from an oak tree, and Cinderella's blind step-sisters pawing through the ashes and placing a pinch in their shoes for good luck in the year to come.

"I appreciate irony more than most, but this is pathetic.  Bricklebrit!  Croesus, go out there and lead them home."

Croesus drags his head off the floor and hacks up a pile of swan bones following by three gold coins.  His muzzle is slick with swan fat and his distended belly grumbles obscenely.

Elora arches an ebony eyebrow.  "Guess I'll have to handle this one myself."  She snaps her fingers and the sisters disappear, transported back to their home, safe and sooty. 

Elora turns her attention to Croesus.  "You look like a slaughterhouse tick.  Have a good time last night?"

Croesus tongue lolls from the side of his mouth, panting with the effort of digestion. 

Elora snaps up an Alka Seltzer and drops it in Croesus' water bowl.  "You deserved every greasy morsel of that roasted swan. Who would have thought meek little Mary Shelly would share her opium-laced tea with the Minotaur?  And what words of horror did she whisper into the bull's ear.  Was she jealous of the living Rock Bottom Remainders?   Who knows what red the Minotaur was seeing when he jumped the stage and went after the band like Cujo.  If you had not hmmm . . . shall we say, nipped the bull by his horn, the world would be a few authors short.  And did you see Snow White dance the Samba with Rumpelstiltskin?  You’d think they were on Dancing With the Stars."

Elora pats Croesus head.  "I'll leave you alone to sleep it off and tell you that Beauty is out of the bog and gaining on Rune, but she’s about to meet her match with Holger the Dane."

 

* * *

 

 Rune approaches a massive hedgerow surrounding the castle and peers through the wrought iron gate.  "Where's the drawbridge and the turrets?" she asks the ball. The drawings she had seen in her mother's books of Grimm castles did not resemble this building of two floors with two wings.

"This castle was built by an emperor of exceeding good taste.  The style is Neo-classical.  You certainly are not worldly, as I am," the ball sniffed.

Rune pushes the iron gate and it swings open.  As she walks toward the castle's large double doors, the Andersen Land philosopher lights upon one of the chimneys. 

"My sorrow is my castle, built like an eagle's nest upon the peak of a mountain lost in the clouds," he squawks.  "No one can take it by storm.  From this abode I dart down into the world of reality to seize my prey; but I do not remain there."

Rune shoots the parrot a look of impatience.  "Wait," says the ball.  "Who is that magnificent bird?"

"You say you're worldly and you've never seen that parrot?" Rune smirks.

"I bear my quarry aloft to my stronghold, my booty is a picture I weave into the tapestries of my palace," the bird squawks, bobbing his head.

The ball jumps from Rune's hand, bounces once, twice, three times and the parrot swoops down and snatches the ball.  As they fly away Rune hears the ball ask, "Are you married? I was once engaged to a lark."

Rune is not distressed by the ball's departure.  She didn't care much for its personality, and she is anxious to see the castle interior.  It's well known that fairy tale beauties are pathologically curious, which gets them into no end of trouble.  And despite her beastly exterior, Rune is a fairy tale beauty at heart. 

She lifts the large brass knocker and raps twice.  In a moment, she hears a whisper of footfalls from within.  The doors swing open and there stands a middle-aged man:  he is tall and large boned; his beard and mustache are a shaggy salt and pepper, and a shining gold crown rest atop his head.  But for the crown, he is completely naked.

"Creechy," Rune gasps with surprise.

"A visitor at last!  Come in," the emperor booms.  Rune shuffles inside and attempts a curtsy.  She nearly topples over because beast bodies are not designed to curtsy.

"You may rise.  I know you are overwhelmed by the magnificence of my clothing; everyone is.  Have a good look," the emperor says and struts in a wide circle.  Two weavers made this cloth with colors and patterns of extraordinary beauty.  Not only is it the finest cloth in the land, but it has the magical quality of being invisible to anyone who is unforgivably stupid."

Rune nods her head and gapes. 

"That was long ago, or was it yesterday?" As the emperor scratches his belly, lost in thought, Rune looks about the Great Hall.  Suits of armor are lined against intricately carved wood panels; tapestries of battles and pastoral scenes hang from the walls; banners of gold and blue flutter slightly in the heat rising from the fireplace, as do the cobwebs hanging everywhere.  Rune realizes the castle is too quiet.  Where are the empress, the royal children, the ladies-in-waiting, the footmen and servants?

The emperor turns his attention to Rune and scowls.  "Who are you and why are you here.  Good Lord, you don't look like any of my subjects.  Can you speak?  Are you real?  Am I dreaming?"  The emperor rubs his eyes and when he takes his hands away, Rune sees madness in his watery blue eyes and she smells fear emanating from his body.

"I can talk," Rune says quickly and as cheerfully as possible.  "And I can sing too."  Rune bows rather than trying a second attempt at a curtsy, and she begins to sing:

"My name is Rune and I've come today

from a land to the south, far, far away.

As an enchanted princess, I've been informed,

that in this land I might transform.

Seeing your castle, I was compelled,