She's always been fond of (ex_roses104) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-07-23 22:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, door: tales, rose red |
Who: Rose Red, the Beast (and the merchant)
What: Locking Belle in the castle
Where: Fairy Tale Land
When: Before the Memories Plot
Warnings/Rating: None
For Rose, life had gone on in much the same way from the day she returned to the merchant and his family. The merchant, who had taken to calling her "his belle" from when she'd been only a child, went about his day, to and from work, selling his wares. His daughters, spoiled creatures, did little but dream of princes and prepare for their futures, and Rose tried to forget her short visit with her sister.
It was not that Rose held any love for Charming; she did not. She did not miss him or long for him, not as she sometimes did the prince that was meant to be her husband. Or, rather, she yearned for that life, and not the man himself. She and Snow, both, had spent their childhoods helping the cursed beast in the woods. Why should Snow get the life she had, while Rose had to live in a small village without any real hope of escape - none that was tolerable, anyway. That, at least, had been her way of thinking when she left the merchant's home behind to visit her sister, now a princess, in her castle.
At first, Rose had intended merely to embarrass Snow. To misbehave, to epitomize the poor relation she was thought to be. But Charming had been, well, charming, and Rose (who was quite young) had made a very poor choice. She had chosen to return to the merchant then, though Snow did not cast her out. But no, this was home now, this small village and the life she led here. And, in truth, she loved the merchant, her "papa," better than she had ever loved her mother. She'd had no father of her own, and her mother (a witch) was seldom home. She and Snow had largely raised themselves until they were separated, until they were deemed unacceptable wives for a beast turned prince (and his sibling).
But that was the past, and Rose awoke that morning much as she did any morning. She could hear her stepsisters chattering by the fire, discussing the many shining qualities of the village's resident heartthrob, and Rose rolled her eyes and sat up in the cot that was her bed in the small room off the kitchen. There was fresh bread on the board (she could smell it), and that alone made her rise and wash with crisp, cold water from the basin and pitcher beside the bed. She wound her long red hair in a white ribbon at the nape of her neck and, after donning a shift and hand-me-down blue dress, she left the room in search of the bread.
As she broke her fast, her papa told her of his intended journey to a neighboring village to sell his wares, and Rose (eager to be outside) did not ask after the worried look on his face that indicated there were problems with his recent shipments. Instead, she left the kitchen before she could be roped into chores, and she spent the morning cajoling the bookseller out of a new book, which she read far away from home and chores, lying on her back in a patch of green and earth, hair long since escaped from its ribbon and strewn upon the grass.
It was long since dark when Rose returned home, after stopping to tend the garden of roses she kept outside the village and in the cool quiet of the woods. She expected the house to be still as she arrived, and it was. No one bothered her as she crawled into her window, ignoring the door altogether, and she disobeyed all orders and read until her candle flickered out in the darkness. She had no idea that her papa's cart had broken a wheel on his way back from the neighboring village, where the financial destruction he had feared had awaited him.
Too, she had no idea that her papa had let himself into a large, old castle, thinking it empty. He had taken a rose from the garden, something to give to his beloved adopted child (who loved them), and then he had begun to take things from the castle itself - first food, then possessions - in order to not return home empty handed.
The roses were wild, the recovering remains of his mother’s garden. The Beast had not thought that such fragile things could be so resilient, but he had noticed when one of the bushes began to flower, and watched it grow as he returned from his hunts, thinking of her and her long-dead passions. He was otherwise in a foul temper, as the witch had left him wounds not easily forgotten, and he moved too slowly to catch quick prey as it scampered away from him in the black wood. As a result his larder was sparse enough to begin with, and when the mute, invisible servant that was his cook could not tell him where their supplies were disappearing to, he had torn the kitchen apart in his rage.
Yet today, today he had found the thief. Not a four-legged beast at all, but a man. A soft, very stupid man. The Beast might have roared and scared the fool off, but then he saw the rose. Curving claws long enough to sink through the man’s throat without effort, the Beast rose up on his hind legs more bizarre striped horse than anything else, hauling the man up with him. The cloak was thick over his shoulders but the gold eyes were lost in the hairy, feathered face and long wolf’s snout. He bared wicked teeth and roared into the man’s face. He meant something like how dare you but he was too angry to form real words. He shook the man so his head rattled on his shoulders, and managed to force his tongue to cooperate. “How dare you!”
The merchant was not a brave man. He had not explained the family's financial woes to his wife, for fear of her tongue. He had not told his daughters they could not have new dresses from the dressmaker, for fear of their disappointment. He was soft, and he was cowardly, and he tried to hide his face and scuttle away from the creature that held him fast. He didn't know what the Beast was, unfamiliar with this area and the tales that certainly accompanied such a creature. No, he was fear, afraid, and the creature would surely have been able to smell that fear with his animal-like snout.
The merchant was not expecting the creature to speak, but he began begging immediately once it did. "Do not kill me. Spare my life and I will give you anything! Anything you wish for! Anything I have is yours, only do not kill me!" The rose remained clutched in his hand, the petals crumpled beneath his pudgy fingers, fingers that were soft and uncalloused, that showed no signs of hard work or toil.
Ravenna had laid waste to the Valley, and there were very few people that could tell of the king that had become a Beast, and perhaps only a handful more that could speak with authority about what lived in the extreme end of the charred Valley. The forest was only just beginning to recover from Ravenna's horrific leaching of its resources, and hid the castle well in its blackened skeleton. The Beast thought of himself as without possessions, without anything of value, and the rose, his mother's rose, was now destroyed in the hands of a squirming, cowardly worm. A worm who dared to imagine that any food in this castle was his to take, as if such bounty appeared by magical spell only for him.
The Beast's claws screamed over the stone just behind the merchant's neck, and his glare was the malevolent glare of a mad dog as he pinned the man still more firmly to the wall. He was seriously considering tearing the man's throat out, sooner rather than later, but he forced his temper back down into his gullet, where it joined the boiling hatred for the witch and all she had done. Rearing back, the Beast tossed the man sideways into the bramble. "You will bring me that which you hold most dear," he roared at him, ignoring the many wounds the witch had left him with and limping again toward the man in the most threatening prowl he could manage. "You will bring it or I will come to claim it, and then I will claim your head. Keep what you have stolen. I do not want your stinking cowardly scent all over my domain. GET OUT."
The merchant fell into the brambles with a hiss and a scream and his hands became cut on the thorns as he moved to get up as quickly as he could. "Anything!" he promised the monster in desperation, and in that moment he was not thinking of what he would trade for the meager items of food and the crushed rose. He was just thankful for his life, survival of the utmost importance. He backed away, and he backed away, and then he broke into a run, tripping and falling over his own feet in his hurry to get to the cart with the broken wheel.
It took the merchant two days to arrive home and, despite thinking about his situation for the entire journey, he was no closer to a solution than he had been when he left the charred land that surrounded the monster's home.
The merchant did not inform his family of his agreement on his first night. Instead, he let his daughters revel in the stolen items from the castle, and he apologized to Rose for losing the bloom he was bringing her, and he allowed his wife to think all was well. Perhaps the creature would not come, would not expect to have the merchant honor his word. The merchant went to bed that evening plagued by nightmares, guilted by his own refusal to keep his word.
It was only on the fifth day of sleepless nights that the merchant unburdened himself to his wife. He told her of the creature, and of the deal he had not kept, and she looked at him as if he had gone mad. It continued in this vein for days, with the merchant's paranoia increasing, and the wife's concern mounting. In the end, on the seventh day she could take no more. If the merchant was so very worried, then they would send one of the girls to this castle the merchant had visited. In her defense, the merchant's wife did not believe such a place existed. She believed whichever girl went there would return unharmed within the fortnight.
The merchant asked for volunteers, but his own daughters refused. Rose, worried for the mental state of her papa, agreed. She set out the following morning in the cart with the merchant.
Rose did not have her adoptive mother's faith that the creature did not exist, and she was unsurprised when the landscape turned dark and charred, just as the merchant had said it would. The castle, hidden at the end of this dead expanse, looked nothing like her sister's glittering palace, and Rose wanted to turn around and return home. But the merchant's paranoia was at full force as they approached the doors of the hell from which he had escaped, and his desire to escape once more overpowered any desire he had to keep his beloved Belle out of the arms of the creature within. "He will see you, and he will allow you to return home," he assured the red-haired girl, but Rose had her doubts, and she lifted the knocker and let it fall ominously against the old wood.
There was a very long pause as the knock echoed through empty rooms four and five deep into the hillside, and the moss seemed to chill on the stones as they waited there in the gloam for something, anything, to happen. Yet the Beast did not appear, and there was no sign that he or anyone else had crossed this threshold in many years. Then, finally, there were steps, soft steps but audible just as they reached the door. Another pause, and then the massive door creaked open on old hinges seemingly of its own accord, the solid oak casting a bleak shadow of its own.
The entryway was very high, yet circular and close, meant to stay the draft and create a bottleneck for potential invaders. Once a great lantern had hung from the rafters far above the small chamber, but it was long gone, and now there were only spiders and their webs. Beyond the much smaller opening beyond there was a Hall that led in three directions: a set of double doors far more ornate than the outer door, likely leading to the Great Hall, and two sets of beautiful curving staircases carved in stone, one to the West, and one to the East.
There was no one to be seen in any direction, the owner of the footsteps invisible and out of the way, as no doubt good servants are meant to be.
The merchant remained just behind Rose as she entered the castle, her intelligent gaze taking notice of the missing lantern in the chamber, the cobwebs that touched nearly everything, and the missing servant. It sent a chill through her, and she wrapped her arms around herself and looked toward the world outside with a regretful longing. She would do what she had agreed to do, but she would not like it. This place was like a tomb, and she was suddenly angry at any man - monster or not - for forcing her papa into this.
She took the most direct path, toward the double doors and (she assumed) the hall that waited beyond. She slowed down when the merchant slowed, sounds from the castle jolting him into stillness and, at times, causing him to fall back. "Come, papa," she finally said, taking his hand and pulling him to the double doors, which she then pushed at, wondering if dirt and time had sealed them shut, or if they would budge under the pressure from her hand.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice echoing into the rafters and carrying up the staircases.
Sounds of movement in the depths of the castle above, perhaps in the upper rooms, sent anonymous echoes through the structure as the Great Hall's doors swung open. Here, at least, were signs of occupation that the flagstones hadn't shown in the entryway: the half-moon of cleared dust where the door opened beyond what it just had, a single burning candle in only one of the many sconces near the door, and the shivering tatters of cloth falling to strings twisting on the walls. The skeletons of rotted pikes and swords were blackened and dusty on the walls, as if subject to the same sickness of the land surrounding the castle. The dais held no thrones, only piles of torn kindling and a heap of something so dusty and dirty it could have been anything from a body to a fallen pennant from above.
Most significant were the tiny pieces of shattered black glass that littered the edge of the Hall and the splotches of dried blood that creased massive pawprints in the dust. There was enough blood that no ordinary man could have survived such wounds.
The sounds of occupation--a thud, a screech of hinges--abruptly came closer.
Rose inched forward when she noticed the blood, long after taking in the decay and state of the room. A step, a step, a step, and she was looking down at a pawprint and convincing herself that it was, in fact, a pawprint. And the blood. Rose had spent most of her childhood outdoors, and she knew the amount of blood loss it took to kill a creature, and this was most definitely a creature, given the pawprint. But she'd never seen a creature of that size, not even the cursed bear that had been the constant of her childhood.
"Papa," she said, turning to draw the merchant's attention to the floor, but the merchant was already backing up, away from the torn curtains and the blood.
"No, Belle. We have to leave. We can't stay here," the merchant said, though he made no true attempt to reach for the red-haired girl in the room with him. He backed up until his back pressed against the double doors that had let them into the hall, and he stopped, as if shocked by the solid presence at his shoulders.
Rose looked down at the pawprint and glass for a moment longer, and then she began the trek across the littered room, stepping gingerly around the black glass that speckled the floor. "You can't run, Papa," she told him, though she looked like she wanted to do precisely that herself.
The sound of the outer doors closing with a howling thud came first. Then the Hall doors, just behind the merchant, came next, a more sweeping but nonetheless permanent sound. The newly-enclosed air seemed to swirl in the confines of the Great Hall, causing one of the battered hangings to give in to the inevitable and collapse in a cloud of dust at one end.
The Beast was a hooded figure. He was about twice the size of a fully-grown brown bear, and he made no attempt to stand on two legs like a man. The cloak was an old much-spattered green, like rotting foliage, and it covered him from tail to snout. The hood was deep and fell down over his eyes and black nose, and the misshapen structure of his back made for odd angles as he paced forward from the very end of the Great Hall. He was not quiet, as not everything was soft pads and fur, nor was he graceful. He seemed to lumber and limp, and much of his movement was his back trying to catch up to his front. His voice didn't sound like a man's voice. It was too high to be truly canine and too low to be anything like a bird's, but it reverberated in a deep chest and went on forever before it tangled on an inhuman tongue.
"There is nowhere to run," he said.
Rose had grown up with all manners of creatures of the forest, and still she had to force her feet to remain where they were. She had to force herself not to back away from what she could see of the inhuman creature beneath the rotting cloak. This was no enchanted bear, as she had thought it would be, assuming it a simple curse like the one that had netted her sister a prince. Her papa had not been exaggerating, and suddenly she was angered that such a large creature would threaten such a scared little old man.
"He kept his word. You'll let him go," she said, more dignity than any actual moment of her lived life in the insistent words.
The merchant, for his part, was not showing any dignity at all. He was pulling at the knobs of the heavy, once-again closed doors, and he was doing so with a terrified desperation, as if a witch was on his heels. "Let me go!" he insisted, and he repeated the phrase. "Let me go! I did what you asked! Let me go."
Perhaps a hint of ache crossed Rose's features in that moment at being so easily and willingly handed over, but no, the merchant was afraid, and fear was a powerful motivator.
"It's alright, papa. He'll keep his word too," she said, forcing herself to look up and up until she could face the shadowed maw that she was certain lived beneath the darkness of the tattered hood.
The Beast did not parade down the center of the Great Hall like a triumphant king. He moved along the wall, tracing the edges of the alcove, taking his time because all Ravenna's little cuts and bites hurt him, and he did not want to show weakness to the merchant and his daughter. The big shadow therefore moved without grace or speed, but came with all the inevitability of gravity ever closer. The Beast thought the girl looked fragile, and her voice was extraordinarily high to him. He was reminded of small sparrows chirping, and it was too long since he had seen a woman to make any other adequate comparison. His attention shifted only briefly to the merchant, cowardly, disgusting thing that he was. He smelled of fear and overindulgence, and the Beast simply wanted him to go away.
When he was close enough that a large column stood between his set of dark shadows and the pair of them standing close to his door, the Beast halted and sniffed the air, looking for some hint of trickery or perhaps a whiff of whatever it was the spoiled fool had brought him. "And what pitiful treasure did you bring to keep your word?" he asked, disdainful even in his great brown voice. "It took you five days to find it." Something of gold or silver, which had little scent? The Beast didn't care what it was. He just wanted the merchant to pay dearly, and that was all that mattered to him.
The closing of the gap, the narrowing of the distance did nothing to assuage the merchant, who only fought harder to escape. Even Rose took a few steps back before remembering lessons learned deep in the woods, that running only made it more likely that prey would chase. She held her ground, blue hood pulled over her red hair and her attention on the merchant's ineffectual attempts at freedom over her shoulder.
When when the creature stopped and sniffed the air, Rose wished that she too could run as the merchant would. But perhaps this beast wouldn't accept merchant's trade, and perhaps she would be allowed to return home to her books and flowers and guilty memories.
The merchant turned, his back against the heavy wood of the door, and he tried to respond, tried to find the words past the fear, but he only managed a nod to the girl at his side, his white moustache trembling along with the fatty layers of his chin.
"Me," Rose supplied in the merchant's stead. "I am the pitiful treasure." There was stubbornness in the words, despite the distinct smell of her growing fear, which she knew she wouldn't be able to hide from any creature with a snout like the one she could see beneath the ruined hood of the monster's cloak. "He kept his word. Let him go."
Yes, he could smell her. He could smell plants, fresh dirt and perhaps imaginary hints of his mother's roses, some distinctly feminine scent mixed in with what she had for breakfast that morning and the growing salt of her fear. It took the Beast a moment to comprehend what was going on, and he huffed out her scent and the otherwise overpowering addition of her father, automatically pulling back his front paws and shaking his head to clear it. The hood was still deep enough, held by ears and mane in place, but there was more fang than mouth.
"A girl?" he asked, incredulously. "This is your trade for the bounty you stole from me?" The Beast was so disgusted with the idea that someone would sell their child, the most precious thing any man should have, that abruptly the anger took over.
He moved forward again, sliding forward in a chorus of shifting feathers and padded weight. Scales slid on stone and a rippling growl filled the hall as the Beast stalked forward toward the two, eyes on the merchant, murderous gold glow just visible.
She misunderstood the reason for his anger, and the merchant did as well. The older man raised his hands, fear stark and unmistakable on his face. "I did what you asked!" the merchant insisted. "We have nothing else!" His girth and the fine cut of his clothes indicated that might not be entirely true, but they had fallen on hard times, and giving up what little money they had was not an option. He had a wife and daughters of his own to feed, and his Belle had volunteered.
Which was precisely Rose's statement as she stepped between the fanged creature and the merchant. "It's all he has. If you don't think I'm enough, then we'll go, and you can forgive the debt," she said, hope slipping through in the brazen statement, and a complete lack of understanding that he might think the merchant a worse choice (given his actions) than a monster in a decrepit castle.
"Let me out!" the merchant insisted, the fangs causing him to pull harder and with more insistence at the closed doors of the great hall.
The Beast halted when the girl got in his way, so abruptly that the cloak swept forward in front of him and his tail flared around his legs to keep him from falling backward. True humanity was, of course, missing, but nothing had ever intercepted his path in this way, with such deliberate denial. Surprised out of his rage, the Beast stared down at Rose. With the light behind him, the hood was even darker, and the hints of feathers and fur were gone, leaving behind only the faint gleam of his eyes. He huffed her scent out of his nose again, and backed away a single, limping step.
Looking from her to the merchant, he resigned himself to the situation. “Open the door,” he barked, seemingly at nothing. There was a pair of moments’ pause, and then the door thudded and slid silently open. On its heels, the outer door did the same in much louder echo. The merchant’s departure was clear, and the Beast lumbered around the girl, knowing his approach would hasten the man’s retreat. “Get out,” he told him, in a faintly more modified tone but no less angry. Disgusting man. He knew so many that had lost and grieved for their children, and this one was willing to give his away.
He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with a girl. Stick her in a room until she ran away, he supposed. Not that she would last long in this forest if she did. “...Get her a room,” he added, not bothering to look around for his invisible servants.
A candle flared into life next to the door, and an invisible hand brought it down so that it floated, singular and mute, in the air. The candle floated out toward Rose and then back toward the door, as if gesturing.
The merchant did not hesitate. He spared one moment, only one, to give his Belle an apologetic look, and then he was running through the open doors and out of the castle without a look back at the red-haired girl he was leaving behind.
Rose watched the merchant go, an expression on her face that was equal parts resignation, equal parts sadness, and she turned to look at the creature with the hood just as he ordered someone she couldn't see to get her a room. "You could let me go," she began, but the candle flared to life a moment later, and she backed away from it with a distrusting gasp. She knew all about witches, and she knew all about magic, and she hadn't had very much luck with either of those things in her short life.
She backed away from the candle, though she knew she was meant to follow it, and it was only force of will that kept her from fleeing in her papa's tracks. A tip of her chin upward, and she gave the creature one last look, as if she could see what he was hiding beneath the hood. "I don't want to stay here," she informed him, before turning in a swirl of blue fabric and following the floating candle and refusing to break down until she was in a room, the door closed behind her, alone.