Princesses

Beauty and the Beast

It was the roses that had done it.

Rosa knew it was her fault. She shouldn't have asked. But her sisters always wanted jewels and dresses and silk cloths from distant lands, and Rosa had wanted a rose. They didn't grow here.

They'd waved their father off, and then Lilian, her eldest sister, had gone about running the household, and Amary, the middle child, had taken every excuse to ride into town. It was a month after he'd gone that a man came back carrying his horse and telling them they'd found his carriage ransacked inside the Thorny Thicket. He'd been forced to move through the treacherous forest after a flood. They didn't say what killed him. The man said kindly that he might've been swept away, but they all knew the dangers of the Thorny Thicket. Rosa's nightmares had been made of its dark creatures since she was a little girl.

The girls were used to being on their own. Their father left for many months at a time to travel to the coast, where he had ships leaving and returning. At first it was as if he would return at any moment. But after another month had passed, the girls started to feel the space their father took up. Lilian had to go and handle his accounts, so that they could be sure his money was still coming in. They lived in their big house with their many things, and her sisters didn't want to lose it.

It was a miracle when another month passed and their father came out of the forest. He had in his hands the single rose, the only thing he had saved. They let him in and made him food and he told his story. A beast in the forest had taken him in, tended his wounds, and brought him back to health. He had told the beast about his daughter's simple request, and so the beast had let him return to his daughters, with the promise that he'd return.

The sisters had refused to let him go. They told him they couldn't lose him again, and they all kept him in bed as they discussed what to do. Lilian and Amary squabbled, while Rosa turned the rose over in her hands.

"I'll go," she said. "In father's place."

Her sisters looked at her. They all looked very much alike, skin the same color of nutmeg, hair dark and curly, same peak to their lips, same point to their noses. Lilian was a few years older than Amary, who was a few years older than Rosa, and at times they seemed so different from her. Now they looked at her with their dark eyes, not eagerly, but as if a solution was near.

"We don't know he'll come," Amary said slowly. "The beast, we don't know if he'll follow father here."

"The Thorny Thicket is filled with many dangerous things," Lilian said. "We can't be sure you'll get there properly."

Rosa looked up at them. "I don't want to wait."

Lilian went to check on father, while Amary sat with her. They held hands and said nothing. No one tried to convince her otherwise.

Three days later, Rosa had a horse and two bags filled with food, clothes, and supplies to help her through the forest. Rosa left the rose on her father's bedstand, kissed his forehead, and hugged her sisters. Then she left.

The Thorny Thicket had always been there. The small forest had turned one day, growing brambles along its borders, the trees turning tall and black, and the animals inside turning monstrous. There had been rumors--there were always rumors--that there was a King of the Beasts, an animal that walked like a man, who kidnapped maidens or sent monsters to devour homes or stole food from storage. Her father had always told her it was wolves or the occasional bear. Nothing more worrying than there'd ever been.

Rosa had never traveled on her own before. Her father had taken them with him when he went to see his ships, and she had gone to town with Amary, who liked to be seen by as many people as possible. Alone, on a horse, with only a few things to keep her warm, it was terrifying. She carried her cloak on her back and trotted slowly into the woods, watching the huge thorny vines that curled in large foliage. The sharp leaves of the brush and jagged ferns that grew in overabundance didn't seem natural for their home, nor did the thick black trees whose branches spread out to cover the sky, giving her the smallest amount of sunlight to see by. There were no birds singing in the trees, nor animals in the brush. Her horse moved nervously, as though any twitch would send it speeding down the path, if there were a path. At times the flora broke away for passage, and at others it curled into itself, or knocked a tree into her path, or pitched the road into a ditch. And at times in the silence she would hear something move against the trees. There were no animals, as far as she could see. And the road seemed to curve endlessly, until she could no longer see where'd she come.