[story] the thousandth beast
author: pei yi
email: dreamsmoke [at] gmail.com
Oh, so you don't believe in fairy tales do you, child? You're grown much too old for them now. Grown too old to listen to good advice too, and stay away from where you shouldn't be.
You've been out in the woods again, I know you.
Well, you're not too old for a good spanking, so you'd best sit yourself down and stop your fussing.
When I was a girl - even younger than you are now, though you wouldn't believe that now, would you? - they used to say if you went deep enough in the woods, you'd find a castle. Or the ruins of one. Once upon a time, they said, a king lived in these parts. Maybe those fairy tales aren't so far away as you think, eh? Well, the king's long gone and forgotten now, and no one's found his castle in a good long time. And maybe it's just as well that they haven't, because when I was a girl, they used to say, go deep enough in the woods, past the river and down into the valley, where the shadows are long and the sunlight scant, where the ferns reach above you like trees - walk deep enough in the woods and you'll find a castle.
And in that castle, you'll find a curse.
They said he had seven daughters, pretty girls as princesses always are. All but the last and youngest, who killed her mother when she was born, who was like to her sisters as night to day. No, she was beautiful, the kind of beauty poets swoon and write sonnets over, the kind that burns like the northern stars in the midnight sky, the kind that drives men to black, cold sin. Oh, you don't know what I mean, child. Pray that you never will.
Beauty like that's a danger to everyone, beholder and beheld both.
For her hand, kings and princes crossed lands and seas to pay court. For her smile, knights and heroes would have thrown themselves into battle and won for love. Powerful stuff, eh? They would have heaped roses under her feet, woven jewels in her hair, strung her pretty white hands with pearls, but she would have none of them. She'd been loved and worshipped and adored for as long as she could remember and never knew its lack, what need had she of more songs, more gifts? They say she'd grown as vain and proud as the gods themselves.
Of course, no one thinks, what if she hadn't wanted a husband? What if she'd wanted to go out into the wide world and see something of it for herself? What if she'd wanted something they couldn't give? But that's not a question anyone asks of princesses or pretty girls, is it now?
So she'd say no, and back they'd come anyway, and some of them would beg, some would plead, and some would despair, and some of them, well, they'd grow angry. So she started asking them for impossible things. Bring me a dress like the sun, she'd say, but no dress could be bright enough. Bring me a dress like the moon, she said, but no dress could be pale enough. Spin this straw into gold, bring me a ruby the size of an egg, tell me how quickly the sun runs around the earth. One by one they'd come, and one by one they'd fail, all of them, emperors and lords and warriors all.
But then, they said, one day a wizard came to the castle.
He was young, his boots were worn and his cloak was in rags. Maybe the wonder was that they let him through the gates at all, but then, he was a wizard, wasn't he? So he must have had magic to thank for that. He walked right through the doors and into the great hall, and made his bows to king and princess. For his welcome, he brought a necklace of raindrops, caught in a spider's web. A small thing, for a princess used to diamonds and silver, but she liked it well enough, the way you favour a toy when it's still strange and new.
Like all the rest who'd come before, he'd come with the same question, and got the same answer. And like all the rest, he asked again.
So she said, "Then bring me a coat made from the skins of a thousand beasts, and I shall give you a different reply."
And he thought long and hard at that, then smiled and swept a second bow. "As your highness wishes," he said, and left.
They said he vanished for a month, leaving no trace but his necklace behind him, so that the princess could have all but forgotten her latest suitor. And perhaps she did, but when the month ended, he returned, and as he'd promised, he bore with him a great coat.
It wasn't a pretty sight, I can tell you - what coat stitched and patched and spun and woven out of so many sorry creatures could have been? But it was a sight to remember, that strange and motley thing he spread on the castle's stone floor. The princess looked at it and laughed, and then set her maids to counting. They counted the skins of bears and wolves and lions and tigers, of sheep and goats and others they had no name for. They counted the feathers of two dozen different birds, stitched into a collar with more colours than anyone could dream. They counted snakes and lizards and fish scales, and a myriad of butterfly and dragonfly wings scattered like jewels. Was there a dragon or a phoenix or a satyr in the collection? Perhaps there was, who can say now?
At the end, when they were done, they counted again, for surety, and whispering, told their princess. They said she smiled strangely at their reply, then stood and let them drape the coat all around her, leaving a trail of feathers and furs in her wake.
And thus exotically garbed, she said to the wizard, "My maids have counted twice, but to the same results. There are but nine hundred and ninety nine beasts in your coat. My answer does not change."
She moved then to unfasten it, but the wizard shook his head and laughed. It was a bright sound, high and clear but, they said, it rang through the castle's stones with a terrible note to all who heard it.
"No, princess," he said to her. "Do you not see? You are the last beast."
If you won't believe in fairy tales, I'm guessing you won't be believing in magic either, will you? After all, what's a rabbit out of a hat but a clever trick of the hand and eye? Or do you after all, child? There's a look in your eye...
Mayhap you've seen something on the edge of a dream you'd rather forget, or heard a voice singing on the winter's wind. If you stand on the edge of the woods and listen long enough, some days I'd swear I've heard the trees themselves sigh. Maybe that's just lonely fancy now, but what the wizards and witches don't tell is how there's as much magic in the earth you walk on as there is in a phoenix's feather. Maybe more.
And when it gets in you, it's like nothing you ever imagined.
Of course they don't tell you that getting a curse set on you's a bed of roses. But they don't tell you either about how it burns right through you, from the marrow out, till it feels like your bones are ash and your skin is black and your tongue is a cinder in your mouth; the way it rips you to pieces, and then puts them back together, but puts them together wrong, different. It breaks you and then it remakes you, to its own cruel will.
And this is what they won't ever tell you, child: you never really break a curse, not if it's properly done.
When the wizard's magic was done, the princess would never be a girl again.
Oh, her scream would have broken your heart and spirit to hear, could have scored itself into the castle's very stones. They said the king tried to strip the coat from his daughter as she fell but it burned his hands and could not be touched. The coat-that-was-a-spell engulfed her; turned fair skin to fur and scale, turned hands that had never know a moment's toil to wicked claws, turned golden hair to an unruly mane.
All the court could do was watch, as if they too had been turned to stone by the wizard's spell.
What do your monsters look like, child? What do you call them? Dragons, trolls, ogres, goblins, take your pick as you will, there's a menagerie to choose from. But there is no name for what the princess became, and pray there never will be, that she was the only one of her kind ever made.
The king ordered the wizard clapped in chains and thrown into the castle's deepest dungeons. He would break the princess' curse, or he would never see the sun again, the king told him. But the spell was the greatest masterwork the wizard had ever made, and it could not be undone. And iron and stone cannot hold a wizard - they said that in a week, he vanished again from the castle, this time never to be seen again.
Perhaps this isn't such a fairy story after all, for what's a fairy tale without a happy-ever-after or ending to speak of? They talked and murmured and guessed, but for every teller, you'd hear a different ending, and each believed their own to be true.
Some said the king shut the cursed princess in the highest room of the tallest tower, where she went mad for the loss of her beauty. They said she ran through the castle, shattering every mirror and glass she could find, till there were none to show her what she had become. They said men and women swooned and went mad at the sight of her, till in the end only the king could bear to look upon his daughter.
And some said in the end the breaking of his most-loved child drove him to madness too, and so kingdom and castle fell to ruin.
Walk deep enough into the forest, they said, and you'll find a castle.
And in that castle, you'll find a curse. Time passes differently for magic than it does for us common folk, and a curse is a long-lived thing. Mayhap the beast-who-was-a-princess is still there, in her tower. Waiting.
Ah, gives you a shiver to think, doesn't it? Think on that the next time you go running into the woods, child. There might be more to what you see than you think.
Oh, but that can't be all? You think I have a different ending to the tale, eh? And what makes you so certain it's a happier one?
There's some as said that unable to bear what she had become, the princess threw herself from her tower window and in death broke the wizard's unbreakable curse, so that when they found her at the tower's foot, she was human again, and free past all saving or cursing.
But remember, child, the wizard had not made her of a single beast, but a thousand. The winged and feathered and fanged and clawed and scaled, the strange and beautiful and cruel and gentle and hideous; the princess was all of these things and none of them.
Maybe she didn't fall when she threw herself from her tower.
Maybe faith and despair and power took her and gave her a new form, of snowy white wings, and carried her into the night, so in the morning, she was gone, and the castle could only grieve and wonder if the magic had taken her one last time.
Perhaps it had, and in its grip, she found the form of every beast that had ever been woven into her cursed cloak, from a fish in the river to a great white northern bear, to a jungle's hissing snake. Every form but her own first, true shape.
But if she lived long enough, she might have found a different answer. A witch told me, long ago, that if you eat someone's still bleeding heart by the light of a full moon, and that heart be freely given, you may take on the skin of the heart's first owner.
But freely given hearts are a hard enough thing to find, so I daresay that's just a foolish thought of mine. Now look at the light, it's nearly evening now. You'd best be getting home before your mother gets to calling and worrying.
Oh, so you think my story's just a hoax to scare you, eh? Get along with you! Waited till you were far enough to run before you said that too, I see. Next time see if I'll spare you a slice of my fresh bread when you pass this way.
You're grown too old to listen to good advice and stay away from the wood, but after all, the castle's empty and long fallen down to stone and bramble now. Not all you see in the wood might be what it seems, but the same always was true all over the wide, wide world. I daresay you'll learn it soon enough.
I'll but pray that you have an easier time of learning it than I had.
the end
email: dreamsmoke [at] gmail.com
Oh, so you don't believe in fairy tales do you, child? You're grown much too old for them now. Grown too old to listen to good advice too, and stay away from where you shouldn't be.
You've been out in the woods again, I know you.
Well, you're not too old for a good spanking, so you'd best sit yourself down and stop your fussing.
When I was a girl - even younger than you are now, though you wouldn't believe that now, would you? - they used to say if you went deep enough in the woods, you'd find a castle. Or the ruins of one. Once upon a time, they said, a king lived in these parts. Maybe those fairy tales aren't so far away as you think, eh? Well, the king's long gone and forgotten now, and no one's found his castle in a good long time. And maybe it's just as well that they haven't, because when I was a girl, they used to say, go deep enough in the woods, past the river and down into the valley, where the shadows are long and the sunlight scant, where the ferns reach above you like trees - walk deep enough in the woods and you'll find a castle.
And in that castle, you'll find a curse.
They said he had seven daughters, pretty girls as princesses always are. All but the last and youngest, who killed her mother when she was born, who was like to her sisters as night to day. No, she was beautiful, the kind of beauty poets swoon and write sonnets over, the kind that burns like the northern stars in the midnight sky, the kind that drives men to black, cold sin. Oh, you don't know what I mean, child. Pray that you never will.
Beauty like that's a danger to everyone, beholder and beheld both.
For her hand, kings and princes crossed lands and seas to pay court. For her smile, knights and heroes would have thrown themselves into battle and won for love. Powerful stuff, eh? They would have heaped roses under her feet, woven jewels in her hair, strung her pretty white hands with pearls, but she would have none of them. She'd been loved and worshipped and adored for as long as she could remember and never knew its lack, what need had she of more songs, more gifts? They say she'd grown as vain and proud as the gods themselves.
Of course, no one thinks, what if she hadn't wanted a husband? What if she'd wanted to go out into the wide world and see something of it for herself? What if she'd wanted something they couldn't give? But that's not a question anyone asks of princesses or pretty girls, is it now?
So she'd say no, and back they'd come anyway, and some of them would beg, some would plead, and some would despair, and some of them, well, they'd grow angry. So she started asking them for impossible things. Bring me a dress like the sun, she'd say, but no dress could be bright enough. Bring me a dress like the moon, she said, but no dress could be pale enough. Spin this straw into gold, bring me a ruby the size of an egg, tell me how quickly the sun runs around the earth. One by one they'd come, and one by one they'd fail, all of them, emperors and lords and warriors all.
But then, they said, one day a wizard came to the castle.
He was young, his boots were worn and his cloak was in rags. Maybe the wonder was that they let him through the gates at all, but then, he was a wizard, wasn't he? So he must have had magic to thank for that. He walked right through the doors and into the great hall, and made his bows to king and princess. For his welcome, he brought a necklace of raindrops, caught in a spider's web. A small thing, for a princess used to diamonds and silver, but she liked it well enough, the way you favour a toy when it's still strange and new.
Like all the rest who'd come before, he'd come with the same question, and got the same answer. And like all the rest, he asked again.
So she said, "Then bring me a coat made from the skins of a thousand beasts, and I shall give you a different reply."
And he thought long and hard at that, then smiled and swept a second bow. "As your highness wishes," he said, and left.
They said he vanished for a month, leaving no trace but his necklace behind him, so that the princess could have all but forgotten her latest suitor. And perhaps she did, but when the month ended, he returned, and as he'd promised, he bore with him a great coat.
It wasn't a pretty sight, I can tell you - what coat stitched and patched and spun and woven out of so many sorry creatures could have been? But it was a sight to remember, that strange and motley thing he spread on the castle's stone floor. The princess looked at it and laughed, and then set her maids to counting. They counted the skins of bears and wolves and lions and tigers, of sheep and goats and others they had no name for. They counted the feathers of two dozen different birds, stitched into a collar with more colours than anyone could dream. They counted snakes and lizards and fish scales, and a myriad of butterfly and dragonfly wings scattered like jewels. Was there a dragon or a phoenix or a satyr in the collection? Perhaps there was, who can say now?
At the end, when they were done, they counted again, for surety, and whispering, told their princess. They said she smiled strangely at their reply, then stood and let them drape the coat all around her, leaving a trail of feathers and furs in her wake.
And thus exotically garbed, she said to the wizard, "My maids have counted twice, but to the same results. There are but nine hundred and ninety nine beasts in your coat. My answer does not change."
She moved then to unfasten it, but the wizard shook his head and laughed. It was a bright sound, high and clear but, they said, it rang through the castle's stones with a terrible note to all who heard it.
"No, princess," he said to her. "Do you not see? You are the last beast."
If you won't believe in fairy tales, I'm guessing you won't be believing in magic either, will you? After all, what's a rabbit out of a hat but a clever trick of the hand and eye? Or do you after all, child? There's a look in your eye...
Mayhap you've seen something on the edge of a dream you'd rather forget, or heard a voice singing on the winter's wind. If you stand on the edge of the woods and listen long enough, some days I'd swear I've heard the trees themselves sigh. Maybe that's just lonely fancy now, but what the wizards and witches don't tell is how there's as much magic in the earth you walk on as there is in a phoenix's feather. Maybe more.
And when it gets in you, it's like nothing you ever imagined.
Of course they don't tell you that getting a curse set on you's a bed of roses. But they don't tell you either about how it burns right through you, from the marrow out, till it feels like your bones are ash and your skin is black and your tongue is a cinder in your mouth; the way it rips you to pieces, and then puts them back together, but puts them together wrong, different. It breaks you and then it remakes you, to its own cruel will.
And this is what they won't ever tell you, child: you never really break a curse, not if it's properly done.
When the wizard's magic was done, the princess would never be a girl again.
Oh, her scream would have broken your heart and spirit to hear, could have scored itself into the castle's very stones. They said the king tried to strip the coat from his daughter as she fell but it burned his hands and could not be touched. The coat-that-was-a-spell engulfed her; turned fair skin to fur and scale, turned hands that had never know a moment's toil to wicked claws, turned golden hair to an unruly mane.
All the court could do was watch, as if they too had been turned to stone by the wizard's spell.
What do your monsters look like, child? What do you call them? Dragons, trolls, ogres, goblins, take your pick as you will, there's a menagerie to choose from. But there is no name for what the princess became, and pray there never will be, that she was the only one of her kind ever made.
The king ordered the wizard clapped in chains and thrown into the castle's deepest dungeons. He would break the princess' curse, or he would never see the sun again, the king told him. But the spell was the greatest masterwork the wizard had ever made, and it could not be undone. And iron and stone cannot hold a wizard - they said that in a week, he vanished again from the castle, this time never to be seen again.
Perhaps this isn't such a fairy story after all, for what's a fairy tale without a happy-ever-after or ending to speak of? They talked and murmured and guessed, but for every teller, you'd hear a different ending, and each believed their own to be true.
Some said the king shut the cursed princess in the highest room of the tallest tower, where she went mad for the loss of her beauty. They said she ran through the castle, shattering every mirror and glass she could find, till there were none to show her what she had become. They said men and women swooned and went mad at the sight of her, till in the end only the king could bear to look upon his daughter.
And some said in the end the breaking of his most-loved child drove him to madness too, and so kingdom and castle fell to ruin.
Walk deep enough into the forest, they said, and you'll find a castle.
And in that castle, you'll find a curse. Time passes differently for magic than it does for us common folk, and a curse is a long-lived thing. Mayhap the beast-who-was-a-princess is still there, in her tower. Waiting.
Ah, gives you a shiver to think, doesn't it? Think on that the next time you go running into the woods, child. There might be more to what you see than you think.
Oh, but that can't be all? You think I have a different ending to the tale, eh? And what makes you so certain it's a happier one?
There's some as said that unable to bear what she had become, the princess threw herself from her tower window and in death broke the wizard's unbreakable curse, so that when they found her at the tower's foot, she was human again, and free past all saving or cursing.
But remember, child, the wizard had not made her of a single beast, but a thousand. The winged and feathered and fanged and clawed and scaled, the strange and beautiful and cruel and gentle and hideous; the princess was all of these things and none of them.
Maybe she didn't fall when she threw herself from her tower.
Maybe faith and despair and power took her and gave her a new form, of snowy white wings, and carried her into the night, so in the morning, she was gone, and the castle could only grieve and wonder if the magic had taken her one last time.
Perhaps it had, and in its grip, she found the form of every beast that had ever been woven into her cursed cloak, from a fish in the river to a great white northern bear, to a jungle's hissing snake. Every form but her own first, true shape.
But if she lived long enough, she might have found a different answer. A witch told me, long ago, that if you eat someone's still bleeding heart by the light of a full moon, and that heart be freely given, you may take on the skin of the heart's first owner.
But freely given hearts are a hard enough thing to find, so I daresay that's just a foolish thought of mine. Now look at the light, it's nearly evening now. You'd best be getting home before your mother gets to calling and worrying.
Oh, so you think my story's just a hoax to scare you, eh? Get along with you! Waited till you were far enough to run before you said that too, I see. Next time see if I'll spare you a slice of my fresh bread when you pass this way.
You're grown too old to listen to good advice and stay away from the wood, but after all, the castle's empty and long fallen down to stone and bramble now. Not all you see in the wood might be what it seems, but the same always was true all over the wide, wide world. I daresay you'll learn it soon enough.
I'll but pray that you have an easier time of learning it than I had.
the end