Mrs. Beast (2 page)

    
If they hadn't all been whining and griping, Elora wouldn't have laced the punch with powdered toad skin.
 
She told them if they spent more time on quality control and less time flapping their gums the answers would be plain as the wart on Mother Gothel's nose.
 
When the punch kicked in, the Gingerbread Witch blew smoke rings from nine orifices. Mother Gothel tied the braid to the railing and swung around the room hooting like a Gibbon.
 
Rumpelstiltskin unfastened his Velcro to show off his scars to the Pond Nixie.
 
Godfather Death brought in the Bremen Town Musicians and led the Thirteen Wise Women in a conga line.

    
It was last night's debate over whether a spell could be virtuous that had prompted Elora to conjure up Palace Fleur de Coeur, witness the debasement of Beauty, and curse, "Bricklebrit."

    
Elora snaps up a cup of Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee, stares into the crystal ball, and a sneer curls her blackberry lips.
 

*
     
*
     
*

    
Unconscious on the Great Hall floor, Beauty dreams of roses, she can smell the Floribunda branch her father picked from the Beast's garden.
 
She hears his voice:
Beauty, take these roses; they will cost your poor father dearly.
 
Then he sobs
 
out the story of his encounter with the Beast and the price to be paid.
 
She hears her sister Violet's voice:
 
See what this measly creature's arrogance has caused!
 
Why didn't she settle for the same gifts as ours?
 
Now she's going to be the cause of our father's death and she doesn't even cry.
 
Beauty feels anew the sting of her sister Daisy whipping the rose branch against Beauty’s bosom, the thorns drawing three drops of blood.

    
(The Grimm psychologist claims that a small amount of bleeding, three being the number associated in the unconscious with sex, prepares little beauties to accept this precondition for conception, because only after the bleeding of menstruation and hymen breaching, is a child born, so bleeding is closely connected with a happy event.)

    
Beauty twitches as pain tugs her into consciousness.
 
Her eyes open on the Great Hall ceiling and a blur of faces encircling her supine body.
 
Prince Runyon is grinning, the tip of his tongue protruding from between his teeth, his eyes crossed in concentration.

    
Ouch!
 
A thorn is stuck in my skin
, Beauty groggily surmises.
 
She rolls her eyes down to the source of her discomfort and sees Runyon puncturing her breast with an inked-dipped needle.
 
He pauses and meets her widening eyes.

    
"Do keep still, darwing.
 
Only thwee wetters to go."

    
Beauty elbows to a sitting position as Runyon's entourage simpers in admiration. "Such an artiste!
 
Do me next!"

    
Beauty wets the hem of her petticoat with tears of humiliation, dabs her breast with the moist satin, reads the three letters and does precisely as they suggest
:
RUN

*
     
*
     
*

    
"No doubt about it-- a spell can be virtuous. The spell I cast on that prince was a stroke of virtuosity."
 
Elora raps her scarlet nails over the crystal ball image of Runyon and his laughing entourage as Beauty flees the Great Hall.
 
“Remember the day I made Runyon run?” Croesus bobs his head with enthusiasm and Elora scratches his ear.

    
When Elora first met Prince Runyon, she was reconnoitering the southern boundary of Grimm Land on a path alongside the Deep Icy River.
 
She wore her toothless, red babushka-headed, bent-with-arthritis, bow-legged, sack-of-sticks-on-back, crone body; easier to sneak up on those deserving of a good zap when disguised as one of the meek and lowly.
 
She had just changed a smart-mouthed brat into a speckled salamander and was stepping jauntily around a curve when Runyon rounded the same curve and knocked her flat.

    
"Watch where you're going, haag!"
 
Runyon sputtered.

    
Elora lay on her back, spindly arms and legs flailing like an overturned beetle.
 
"Help an old lady to her feet, Deary," she croaked in her most pitiable voice.

    
"Happy to obwige," Runyon leered and hoofed the old gal in the ribs, sending her bouncing down the riverbank. Upon the third bounce Elora changed to her natural state.
 
She waited for Runyon at the next bend in the path, and when he saw her, he stopped dead in his tracks. Whistling like a cartoon wolf, he lasciviously took in her knee-length hair, blue-black as raven's wings, eyes just as black with iridescent flecks of silver, and five feet ten inches of curvaceous porcelain flesh wrapped in a Versace
 
body suit.
 
Elora sauntered up to him, wrapped her
 
arms around his neck and stuck her tongue in his ear.

    
"I sure would wike to get in those pahnts," Runyon panted, kneading Elora's tush.

    
Elora ruffled his hair. "That's just what I need," she whispered, twisting a blonde curl around her finger, then screamed in his ear, "two assholes in there!"

    
Runyon staggered backward, covering his ear.
 
He saw Elora's lips moving as if she was throwing kisses, and faintly heard her words:
 
"Bricklebrit, Bricklebrit, Bricklebrit."

    
She aimed an index finger at Runyon and growled,
 
"You bruised my ribs, you sebaceous wad of maggot cum."
  
Then the beastly transformation unfurled in time-lapse photography speed: coarse, copper-colored hair sprang from each pore; his skull expanded to the size of a buffalo's; his eyelids retracted, exposing horrific peeled-grape orbs; his nose spread to the likeness of a purple cauliflower; his mouth stretched into an ear-to-ear gash, displaying jagged teeth sprouting from bright blue gums; his neck disappeared, setting his boulderish head atop a humped back and barrel chest; his arms lengthened, his legs shortened, his hands and feet tripled in size.

    
Runyon the Beast ran like mad and dove into the Deep Icy River.
 
As she watched him swim, a sly smile crept over Elora's blackberry lips. She aimed her finger once again, and when the Beast crawled onto the French fairy tale bank, another part of his anatomy had tripled in size. He shook the water from his fur and gaped at his pendulous appendages.

    
"A tribute to my exquisite sense of the ironic," Elora chuckled.
 
"Listen up, beasty boy.
 
Five miles southeast, in the Kingdom of Fleur de Coeur, is your new palace, spelled to provide you with comforts.
 
Any meal you desire, ask, and it will appear.
 
Request a tune and instruments will play.
 
There's a magnificent rose garden and hundreds of books to take up your leisure--you'll have plenty.
 
You also have the power to change back to your obnoxious royal self if you can find a woman who will love you as is and agree to become your wife.
 
But you can't reveal your true identity.
 
Oh, and on your bedside table is a magic mirror; anything you wish to see will appear on its surface:
 
your parents when they
 
assume you're dead; your friends carousing and gambling; your lovers, slick with passion in the embraces of others; the bustling cities and serene villages you cannot visit.
  
Every time you pick up that mirror, you'll see the beast you truly are, and, simply for my amusement, you have to phrase your requests in rhyme.
 
Bonne chance, bebe."

*
     
*
     
*

    
The mirror is the last item Beauty packs.
 
She has already packed three gowns, two petticoats, one pair of bloomers, four hats, two pairs of gloves (one lace, one leather) and four pair of shoes into a large portmanteau.
 
She hasn't a clue where she'll go, but go she must.
 
Up until now, she has forgiven
 
Runyon's eccentricities, believing his loving, beastly self would eventually emerge.
 
However, tricking her into exposing her derrière to his voyeuristic entourage was unforgivable.

    
Overcome by a spasm of nausea she presses the cool mirror to her forehead.
 
After a moment, she opens her eyes and five letters shine before them.
 
She moves the mirror away from her face and they disappear.
 
Placing it to her forehead once again, the letters reappear:
ELORA.

   
"Elora is the enchantress who changed Runyon into the Beast.
 
I broke her spell with a vow of love.
 
Perhaps could she change him
 
back to my beloved Beast?"
 
Beauty whispers.
 
Even though Beauty has never been outside a twenty mile radius of her home, she believes she might find Elora with the mirror to guide her.

    
"Yes, I'll have an adventure, a genuine quest, bold as any knight or prince."
 
Enamored by the thought, Beauty sighs.
 
"I'll ride Vixen, Runyon's Arabian mare, travel by day and sleep by a campfire.
 
I'll ford streams and climb mountains, my love for the Beast surmounting every obstacle."
 

*
     
*
     
*

    
Croesus releases a doggy sigh in response to Beauty's declaration of love and receives a firm thump on his head.
 
"You're fogging up my ball," Elora mutters.
 
"You know I detest sighing, and most especially Beauty's sighs."

    
Elora has made it her business to know the character of every being within the fairy tale realm. Since birth Beauty has demonstrated character above and beyond the norm of a fairy tale beauty, so Elora has taken a special interest.

    
“There was something different in the atmosphere the day of Beauty’s birth that made me travel to her dwelling; a yellow and lavender layering of the sky, the scent of mint, and the appearance of three white Ibis flying east.”
 
Elora snaps her fingers and conjures up the day of Beauty's birth within her crystal ball.

    
Beauty's mother, Antoinette, lies beneath an eiderdown quilt upon a massive mahogany bed.
 
Her face is as pale and wet as skim milk.
 
Her daughters, Daisy and Violet, aged six and eight, are in their mother's dressing room dusting themselves with powder, rouging their cheeks, and fighting over the contents of the jewelry box.
 
Marcel, a prosperous merchant, waits outside the large double doors for the squall of his third progeny.
 
The baby does not squall, not as the midwife bathes her, nor when she lay her on a bed of rose leaves, cleans her mouth with honey, wraps her in ermine skins and calls for the father.

    
Marcel jumps at the sound of his name.
 
Violet and Daisy gallop down the hall in a cloud of talcum as their father holds a finger to his lips to quiet them.
 
When he turns his back to open the doors, they stick out their tongues. Marcel perches on the bed and his usual indifference to infants is stymied when Beauty lifts her long lashes and trills like a pigeon.
 
His heart goes flip-flop.