Mrs. Beast (23 page)

    
"Three days," the frog answers.

    
Beauty throws off the horsehair blanket and rubs her face.
 
"I must be on my way."

    
"No, no, you mustn’t go.
 
It's harvest time, Dearie-doo.
 
The flower will get in your blood and poison your tadpole.
 
Princess Rosamond will visit you at sundown."
 
Fergus croaks and hops through a vaulted passageway, up six steps and disappears from view.

    
Beauty sits upright, her head spins, she dry heaves, and then collapses on the mattress with a moan and falls asleep.

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"Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me," an ethereal voice enters Beauty's ear, and with a start, she realizes the breath of the singer is falling on her cheek.
 
She quickly stands and hears footfalls scurry, and the strike of a match.

    
One by one, seven sconces are lit and the grotto is bathed in candlelight.
 
Beauty sees a woman dressed in ragged overalls, her pockets sagging with garden tools.
 
Her hands are mud-stained, and her feet are bare.
 
She's small boned, but her legs are long and her shoulders are broad.
 
Her vermilion hair hugs her scalp like a cap of cardinal feathers, sharply contrasting skin as thin and white as eggshell.
 
"I am Princess Rosamond," she says in the ethereal voice of the singer.

    
Rosamond walks toward Beauty with tentative, dodging steps, turning her head from side to side.
 
The tips of her ears and her chin are delicately pointed.
 
Rosamond lifts her long lashes, revealing eyes the hue of watercolor violets.
 
"You are Beauty, Fergus told me.
 
Do you dance? I found a boar skin bag at the southern edge of the field."

    
"My satchel?"

    
"I placed it beside the table.
 
Your dress is perfectly delightful; I can smell its flowers.
 
I can dance in my blue dress.
 
I must change for dinner." Rosamond skitters down the passageway, leaving Beauty baffled and a bit nervous.
 
She takes one step and her foot slides like a skater's on ice.
 
Looking closely, she sees the floor's stones are slick with age and damp.

    
Beauty removes her boar skin shoes and cautiously walks toward one of the sconces, dodging cobwebs that drape like curtains from the grotto ceiling.
 
She lifts a candle and wanders through the cave.
 
As she moves, it appears that the walls are alive; her body reflects aqueous shadows over walls embedded with once elaborate mosaics and arabesque patterns fashioned from sea shells, mother of pearl, coral, and shards of colored glass, now eroded by weather, moss, and neglect.

    
At the rear of the grotto she finds a pond fed by an underground bubbling stream.
 
In an alcove above the pond is a reclining marble maiden.
 
Beauty reads the words carved in the statue's base:

        
Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep, And to the murmur of these waters sleep; Ah, spare my slumbers gently tread the cave, And drink in silence, or in silence lave.

    
Beauty kneels, cups her hands and gratefully drinks the cold, clear water.
 
She splashes her face and her baby wave its tiny fingers.
 
Beauty coos, "Hello to you too, little sleeper."

    
Revived and hungry, Beauty looks for the table.
 
She spots her satchel on the floor next to a giant tree stump, on which two seats have been scooped from the wood.
 
She lowers herself into one of the hollows, the wood creaks and wobbles beneath her.
 
The table is set with three bowls of unidentifiable food, two gold plates and two gold spoons.
 
She eyes the mush suspiciously and decides it's best to wait for Rosamond to return.

    
A half hour passes before Beauty wonders why she's sitting in this damp, decaying cave when she should be past Charmed Kingdom by now.
 
Why should she take the word of a big talking frog?
 
She grabs her satchel, rises from the table, and begins her ascent up the passageway to the surface.
 
A few steps upward and the acrid odor stings Beauty’s throat. She turns back and her stomach growls with hunger. She can wait no longer for the princess; she dips her spoon into one of the bowls.

    
Suddenly, Rosamond appears at the top of the stairs.
 
Despite Beauty's training, she holds the spoon in mid-air and gapes.
My goodness, she's a schooner at full sail.

    
Rosamond teeters sideways through the passageway because the whalebone form beneath her dress extends her hips to three feet in width.
 
Beauty can see numerous moth holes in the once lustrous, once aquamarine, satin material.
 
The silk roses encircling her wrists and her bodice droop their crushed, humiliated heads.
 
Lace overlay on the sleeves trail like old wallpaper.
 
To top it off, Rosamond wears a white wig of astounding proportion: a good two feet in height, its curlicues are tucked around shells of every shape and color.
 
She carries a porcelain tea service, which she carefully sets on the table.
 
When she plunks into the seat, the whalebone extensions fold like an umbrella in a tempest and knock her wig askew.
 
Rosamond rights the hair and dips her spoon into a bowl of pureed prunes.

    
"I crave sugar.
 
Sweets for the sweet." Rosamond dips her spoon into the bowl of pureed prunes. "Sweetness is one of the gifts I received from the twelve Wise Women.
 
Fergus told me you're expecting a child.
 
Why are you here?"
 
Rosamond pulls a loaf of brown bread from her bodice and a sickle shaped knife from her pocket.

    
Beauty blinks three times before answering. "I'm on a quest to Glass Mountain to restore my husband to the man he was when I first came to love him.
 
My baby will be born in September.
 
I need to complete my quest before then."

    
"You happened upon us during harvest.
 
I will be occupied from sun up to sundown.
 
Three weeks to finish milking the poppy pods, then you can safely take your leave."
 
Rosamond cuts through the bread with her knife and slices the tip of her finger.
 
The blood trickles down as she lifts the bread to her mouth.

    
"Rosamond—“ Beauty points, “your finger is bleeding."

    
Rosamond rips a trailing piece of material from her sleeve and wraps it around her finger. "There are five thousand, seven hundred and fifty-two pieces of glass in this grotto."

    
That familiar uneasiness slithers over Beauty's ribs.
 
Three weeks!
 
Whatever will I do alone in this cave for three weeks?
 
Why is it the flowers make me ill, but Rosamond walks freely among them?

    
"Rosamond, poppies grew in my father's garden and they caused no ill effects."

    
"Ah, but these are not your garden variety poppies.
 
Magic poppies, papaver somniferum; the source of opium. I would be sick without them. A pity you cannot partake of this poppy tea.
 
It soothes the nerves; a flower in the blood." Rosamond coughs so harshly the wig falls into her lap.
 
"Care for a piece of bread?"

    
Beauty shakes her head.

    
"This wig, dress and grotto belonged to my mother, Princess Marina.
 
She used her dowry to decorate these walls.
 
Before I was born, she passed her time here, wishing for a child and waiting for Father to return from kingly duties." Rosamond's eyes water and she rubs her nose roughly, sniffs and coughs. "She's dead."

    
"I'm so sorry."
 
Beauty's eyes tear in sympathy, for the poor mad princess and for herself.

    
"My father is dead also," Rosamond says and eats a spoonful of applesauce. "The origin of the phrase, a nine days' wonder lies in the fact that kittens and puppies are blind for the first nine days of their lives. During this time they live in a wondrous world of their own, all instinctual. After nine days, their eyes open and everything visible becomes ordinary."

    
"Is that so?" Beauty asks, wondering how one is supposed to respond to such a statement out of the blue.
 
"Your mother must have waited a long time for her wish to come true."

    
"Many years. Then one day as she was affixing shells, she stopped to drink from the pool.
 
She cried,
Would that we had a child
, and Fergus climbed out of the water.
 
He said,
Before a year has passed, you will bring a daughter into the world
. And she did.

    
“When I was born, father ordained a great feast.
 
Not only did he invite his relations, friends, and acquaintances, but also the Wise Women, that they might be favorable to me.
 
There were thirteen wise women, but as Father had only twelve golden plates, one of them had to be left out."
 
Rosamond's nose begins to run, and she sniffs and coughs.

    
"Can I get you some water?"

    
"No, thank you.
 
From my cup I sip a swallow of sunlight, intoxicating and illuminating."
 
Rosamond pours the tea, her hands trembling. The steaming liquid splashes over her hand and she drinks until the cup is dry.

    
Good gracious, can she be alive?
 
Is she an illusion, a ghost?
 
Did the opium effect my senses or am I still dreaming?

    
"As the feast drew to an end, twelve wise women came forward to present me with gifts: beauty, riches, sweetness, modesty, faith, cleverness, hope, fortitude, meekness, prudence, charity, and charm.
 
After the twelfth spoke, in came the uninvited thirteenth wise woman in a rage.
 
She cried out,
In the fifteenth year of her age the princess shall prick herself with a spindle and shall fall down dead.
 
Without speaking one more word, she turned away and left the hall.
 
Everyone was sitting terrified and silent when they heard a voice shout,
Bricklebrit
."

    
"Bricklebrit?"
 
Beauty gasps.
 
"Who was she?
 
Did she wear something red on her head?"

    
Rosamond cocks her head and squints at Beauty.
 
"Yes, a red wimple.
 
She said further,
The princess shall not die, but fall into a deep sleep for a hundred years
."

    
"Did you prick yourself and sleep for a hundred years?"

    
Rosamond pours another cup of tea.
 
"Hul gil, the joy plant, is what the Sumerians call opium.
 
To the contrary, it makes one calm and indolent."
 
Rosamond's chin drops to her chest, her cup slips from her grasp and shatters on the floor.

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