Page 3 of Beauty Reborn
Astra scowled at me like I’d fed her ivy berries.
Father looked at the axe in my hands, his jaw slack. “Beauty, did you ... ?”
“The forest is enchanted, Father. Living fairy and all.” I handed the axe to Rob. “We’d best stay out of it.”
They were, of course, relentless, and they weaseled the full story out of me at last. Perhaps they even believed it. At first. But as Astra pointed out, fairies were not known for kindness, so why clear the land? As Callista pointed out, I’d made no wish and therefore could have invoked no magic. As Rob pointed out, I’d chopped a tree. If there really were a fairy of the forest, I’d have been cursed with pig ears or worse on the spot.
Don’t listen to Beauty; she’s whimsical. Don’t believe a word. Not a word.
Father’s troubled frown was worst of all. True or not, my story only added more to the burden he already carried. In the end, he made the decision: No one goes in the forest.
So even though I caught another glimpse of the fairy through the trees, I made no mention of it. She could have enchanted me to float, turned my nose to a snout, attached herself to me like a growth, and I would have maintained my silence all the same.
“If only Beauty could have accomplished the planting along with the clearing,” Astra said, not even throwing seeds with the rest of us. “If only her fairy would advance the crops instantly to harvest.”
I smiled. “If only Astra would put her tears to use as rainwater, the crops may advance to harvest just as fast.”
That’s the truth of how my story began: with a secret and a smile.
And one more familiar element—
The day came too quickly when we’d exhausted what little food we’d brought, our nonexistent funds, and our meager resources, and Father announced that he would hunt in the forest alone, unaccompanied even by Rob. He did not return with meat. He returned with only one thing.
A rose.
Chapter
1
Perhaps I startled the beast, showing up at its gate alone and empty-handed, looking not remotely like a rose thief. In the pre-dawn gloom, the great golden gate loomed before me, covered in creeping yellow vines of the finest craftsmanship, each tendril dotted with the roses this creature apparently loved so much.
Beyond the gate was a path paved in gray stone, like a trail of fog leading through lavish gardens of every flower imaginable to spring, in varieties I’d never seen in the hothouses of the city. After the gardens came the white-stone castle, with red brick at its windows and on its turrets. Even under a dim sky, it was grand. It was gorgeous.
To die here would not be so bad.
“Hullo, Beast,” I called, waving even though there was no beast to be seen and not another living soul besides. “I am Robert Acton’s daughter, Beauty. He plucked a rose from your many gardens, and I am here to pay his debt.”
Any social tact I’d ever possessed, drilled into me by a high-society mother and a fretting governess, I’d left behind in our city house, tucked neatly on the empty shelves of its study. I’d always harbored a reckless tongue, and on the verge of death, the careful bridle that had once harnessed it was now removed. What would a beast care if its meal came with no manners and a tendency to conversation even if no one marked her? Surely it would care less than Astra did.
The golden gates shuddered at my voice, but if they felt horror at my uninvited arrival or bold announcement, they swung open regardless, and I walked the dew-covered path to the castle entrance. Its great double doors swung open in the same way, without even a word to prompt them. I only lifted my hand, and they shied away from my touch, repulsed by the very idea. Perhaps they saw the dirt beneath my fingernails, or perhaps they saw even deeper to the filth on my soul.
“I said I’m Robert Acton’s daughter,” I tried again, “come in his place.”
Father had been very specific that the beast had appeared from thin air. But nothing appeared in the silent entryway. A coat stand shivered at my words, as did the lit silver sconces.
I worked the thick gold ring from my finger, held it up to catch the light. “I have this.”
But no one answered.
When Father had gone hunting, I’d offered to goinsteadorwithhim, though the words had been embarrassing to speak, shamefully thin and hollow with no hunting skill to give them worth. Not like Rob, who was also denied. But when Father had stumbled home pale-faced and terrified, when he’d spoken of a snarling beast and a debt to be paid, when he’d pulled a rose from his pocket with not a petal crushed because the petals were pure gold, I felt a great stone of certainty settle in my stomach. Because here was something I could do, and there was nothing empty in it except me, and even if I was being hollowed out by fire, it was roaring loud as any beast.
While Astra wailed the moon into the sky as if Father’s grave had already been dug, Callista comforted her. I didn’t, and with her own tears, Callista called me heartless. She had no idea. Father spoke with Rob in the back room, charged him with tending the family. Meanwhile, I snuck the enchanted ring from Father’s coat, the one that was meant to whisk him back to the beast after he’d finished his goodbyes. I rotated it three times around my thumb, and then the cottage was gone.
And I stood at a palace’s gold gates.
When I’d come in my father’s place, I’d hoped the beast might be angry at my deception. I’d never imagined it might be silent.
Seeing no other option, I dropped the ring on a table and hesitantly wandered the castle. Perhaps I would find the beast asleep. My intellectual side could not help being curious about a magical beast, and a sleeping creature would provide me the chance for observance I couldn’t obtain while I was being speedily devoured. Father had not given a full description of the creature, but I could not fault him if all he’d noticed in the moment were the gleaming fangs. And the astonishingly human voice.
