Cursed Beauty (A Fairy Retelling #1)
Read Cursed Beauty (A Fairy Retelling #1) Online
Authors: Dorian Tsukioka
Tags: #Fiction & Literature
CURSED BEAUTY
by Dorian Tsukioka
TABLE OF CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright © 2013 by Dorian Tsukioka
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher (which honestly is not hard to get, just email me at
[email protected]
) except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Those who flagrantly disregard this copyright notice may find themselves completely shunned and their karma looking not so good for any future lives.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my good friend, Becky, who gave me the courage to write, and put up with listening to me rattle on and on about my story idea over many late nights at Perkins.
Writing and pie is a delicious combination.
This book is also dedicated to Anne Elisabeth Stengle, who gave me a purpose and a goal, leading to the creation of this story, and the impetus to dream up more.
JUST FOR YOU
Thank you. If you’re reading this, then thank you. I am awed and amazed that you have taken some of your time, and have given it to me and to reading the words I have written down just for you. You are amazing, incredible, super smart and oh-so-sexy. Have you lost weight? You look so hot! If you enjoy this book, you can find more of my writing on my blogs. I even occasionally update them. I try.
My writing blog can be found at
http://dorianwrites.blogspot.com
My weight loss blog can be found at
http://onehundredpoundsoffat.blogspot.com
You can also check out my other published works on
my Amazon Kindle page
!
If you REALLY enjoyed the book, please consider writing a review.
Review writing has been scientifically-proven to lead to weight loss.
Honestly, it’s true.
PROLOGUE
Though she was now miles away from the prince’s twenty-first birthday ball, the girl could still hear the music ringing within the castle walls. It was nearly midnight, but her feet wanted to continue dancing, waltzing her way to the courtyard behind the house that had been her home for the past seventeen years. The bells of the clock had not yet begun to ring. She had arrived on time.
The quiet
Clip! Clip! Clip!
of her shoes striking the ground was the only sound as she danced down the alley to where an old woman stood in the courtyard waiting for her.
“You haven’t torn your pretty dress, have you, darling?” the woman asked.
“No, no. I don’t think so,” the girl replied.
“Good. You do look quite beautiful, you know,” the woman said, looking the girl over. “I think perhaps some of your hair pins came out while you were dancing. Your hair has come undone.”
The girl reached up to check, and indeed, her hair had fallen loose. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to lose them. They must have fallen…” her voice trailed off as she looked on the ground behind her.
“No matter, my dear. No matter. You haven’t lost your shoes as well, have you?” the old woman inquired.
The girl lifted the up the bottom of her silken dress along with several layers of petticoats, and stuck out one dainty foot encased in a clear, shimmering glass slipper. The moonlight caught on the curves of the slipper, reflecting it back onto the old woman, bathing her in a cold, white glow.
“Good,” the old woman said. “You followed my directions perfectly, dear. Are you pleased with how beautiful you looked tonight?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl replied. “No one knew I was merely servant girl. I looked just like a proper lady. It was the perfect disguise.”
The old woman’s face broke into a beaming smile. “How wonderful. And did you meet your prince, finally? Did he speak with you?”
“Yes. He noticed me from across the ballroom, and asked me to dance with him again and again. I almost forgot to leave on time, I was so enthralled with him. And he with me, I think.”
“Do you love him, dearest?” the old woman asked.
Looking down to her hands still clutching the skirts of her gown, the girl blushed deeply.
“I do,” she answered. “I’ve loved him ever since…” she faltered.
“Since your father died in the king’s army,” the old woman finished. “I remember you telling me how the prince came to bring the news to you and your mother, and offered his condolences personally. Only a kind-hearted man would do something so noble.”
“Yes, that’s just what I believed, too,” the girl admitted. “And I was right. He is so very kind. And tonight it seemed that he…”
The girl blushed even more deeply.
“That he what, dear?” the old woman gently prodded.
“That perhaps he could love me, too,” the girl confessed.
“Of course he could, my dear. Your heart is pure, and your loveliness was unmatched tonight,” the old woman said. “How could he
not
fall in love with you?”
“My beauty was due completely to you, and these magical slippers,” said the girl. “I am deeply indebted to you.”
“Oh my sweet girl, your beauty is all your own. The slippers cannot create beauty, they can only reveal it. They may change your servants’ rags into gowns, but they cannot make you beautiful if you truly are not lovely inside and out.”
The bells of the town clock began to chime.
The girl drew near to the old woman, and clutched her soft, wrinkled hands. Her eyes glistened with tears.
“How can I ever repay you?” she asked. “Your kindness overwhelms me.”
“You needn’t worry about repayment my dear. Just tell me, are you truly in love with your prince?” the old woman asked, squeezing the girl’s hands tightly.
The bells continued to chime, and the girl began to feel a change. Her skirts began to diminish, the petticoats disappeared.
“Yes, I love him. With all my heart and soul. I love him with my very life,” the girl confessed.
“Good,” said the old woman, looking deep within the young girl’s face. “But you needn’t give all your life, dearie. Just a portion of it will do.”
The girl blinked.
“I’m sorry...what?” the girl asked.
“Your life, my dear. I won’t be needing all of it. Just a bit,” the old woman said. “Just the portion of your life that is in love. That’s the sweetest of the emotions, you see. It’s the one I like best.”
The girl dropped the old woman’s hands as if they were live coals.
“I don’t understand.”
“You will soon enough.”
The change continued. Soot and grime appeared on her clothes and face. The beautiful ringlets of the girl’s shining hair matted together into thick tangles. Rough calluses appeared on her hands. The only items remaining from her beautiful ensemble were the glass slippers which continued to shine, but now, that light was no longer reflecting outward. Instead, it was drawing the surrounding light into the shoes like a magnet.
It wasn’t only the light that was being absorbed into the shoes. The power of the slippers began draining some part of the girl’s very being as well. Something deep. Something beautiful.
A pain seared through her chest. She gasped and doubled over.
“What is happening?”
The old woman answered, “This is how I take my payment.”
The shoes began to pulse with a glow of their own. No longer clear as crystal, they turned a deep, dark red. An icy coldness took hold of the girl, freezing her where she stood. It began in her heart, as if all the heat had suddenly been snuffed out. The coldness snaked throughout her body, and with it a feeling of utter despair.
“What are you doing to me?” she cried, but the old woman said nothing. The final peals of the midnight bells dissipated into the night air as the old woman simply smiled and watched.
The shoes which had been so gloriously beautiful before, turned such a dark shade of red that they were nearly black. Though the coldness was still present, the searing pain and the feeling of being consumed by the shoes finally stopped. The girl kicked off the shoes with a shriek.
“Oh, now, there’s no cause to treat my glass slippers that way,” said the old woman as she reached down and picked up the ebony-red slippers from the ground. “After all they did for you tonight, I think you’d be a little more grateful.”
The girl’s teeth chattered. “Grateful? What did they do to me? Why am I so cold?” the girl demanded. “I could feel something leaving my body. What did they take from me?”
The old woman glanced down momentarily at the glass slippers in her hands, then fixed a pointed gaze at the girl. “Your love,” the old woman answered. “They took your love as my payment.”
“My love?” the girl asked. Then, she felt it. The coldness was not just within her flesh. It was in her very soul. She searched for her love, her deep feelings for the prince, for her family, for herself, even, but her heart was completely barren. Her love was gone. Stolen.
The girl staggered back, placing her hands on a wall to keep from falling down. The hollowness in her heart was deafening.
“I feel so empty.”
“Ah, yes,” the old woman said, “that’s bound to be the case. However, you’ll find that your other emotions are still there. Perhaps they’ll even grow stronger without love to push them aside. Anger, bitterness, rage, all those emotions are still very much a part of you.”
The girl could feel the truth of the old woman’s words. Even now, the bile wretchedness of anger rose in her throat.
“But why? Why would you take my love from me?”
“The answer to that is simple my dear,” the old woman answered, still smiling sweetly at the young girl. “Love tastes the best.”
The old woman held one of the slippers up to her mouth, and tilted back her head. Liquid, thick as honey, redder than blood, poured out of the shoe and into the old woman’s mouth.
The girl screamed.
CHAPTER 1
“Why do you suppose father is so late?” Adelaide asked her stepmother, Celeste, when Cook finally scurried his plate away to the kitchen for safekeeping, as the rest of the house began making preparations for bed. “Do you think the rain washed the bridge out again? Is he still at the castle, maybe?”