There was once a prince who lived in an enormous castle all alone, save for his numerous servants.
He was extraordinarily handsome and wealthy as you can possibly imagine. But he was vain, and he was cruel. He cared for no one, and especially not those whose appearances repulsed him.
One day, a very old, wretched-looking hag crossed the stone bridge to his castle and banged the prince's gigantic doorknocker on his towering double doors. The prince angrily made his way to the doors before any of his servants had the chance, throwing one open and barking out a demand to know who would dare to bother him at this hour. "Me, sir," the woman said, and the prince looked down to see the old hag standing at least two feet beneath him, her shoulders hunched under a black cape, her hands shaking; though from the rain or simply age, he could not tell. "Well, what do you want?" he boomed, and the servants who stood behind him in the doorway jumped, though the old woman did not falter. She reached with one frail hand under her cape and withdrew it with a single red rose. The rain left silver drops to slide down its surprisingly sturdy-looking petals as she held it out to him. "I will give you this rose," she said, her voice shaking as much as her hand, though clearly, this time, because of age, and not because of fear, "in exchange for the night's stay in your castle." The prince's laughter boomed louder than his screams, and he shook his head. "What a ridiculous, hideous old thing you are!" His laughter stopped and he glared down at her, "Leave at once. I do not want your repulsive face in my sight any longer." The old woman stared at him a moment longer, and then dropped the rose to the ground and turned from him. Before the prince could push the great door closed, however, the woman's back bended strangely backward; her cape hiding her face as it did so, and suddenly her feet were no longer on the ground. The prince watched in horror as the woman rose into the air, her cape stretching out around her as her body arched bizarrely at inhuman angles. Then one spindly, wrinkled hand shot out from under the cape and twisted horrifyingly in front of his eyes, seeming to turn inside out. He screamed, and suddenly, the hand was still, stretched out into the night like the branch of a birch tree, and it was different. No longer spindly or covered in wrinkles, it was the slender, smooth, elegant hand of a beautiful woman. The hand withdrew back into the cape and the woman fell slowly to the floor as the prince stared, wide-eyed, unable to move.
Then the same hand reached out to move the cape away from the woman's body, and she was not the same. Wearing a dress which looked to have been spun from pure gold, there lay, beneath the haggard black cape, a beautiful young woman. Her hair was sewn by strings of stars, her eyes were the bluest of lakes, her lips were the petals of the rose she had offered. She stood again, and the prince backed away from her in terror. "You have done a dreadful thing," the woman said, and she had picked up the rose, which she now held out to the prince again, but he did not move. "You are vain and heartless, and for your actions, you will be punished." She held out the rose to him again, and this time, his body moved forward without his permission, and his hand wrapped around the flower, a single drop of blood falling down his wrist as a thorn pierced his skin. "You care only about appearances, and so you shall become a hideous beast, until your twenty-first birthday." As the woman spoke, the prince felt a strange stirring inside of him, as if his insides were moving, adjusting, growing. "If, by then, you find a woman you can love– and who loves you in return– then you shall regain your present appearance." The woman stopped to look at the prince in silence for a moment, and he began to convulse, his shrieks stopped by a spasming tongue. Then she continued, "If, however, you do not find a woman by then, you shall remain a beast forever." Finally, his body was lifted into the air, and as his own body began to contort in unnatural ways, the woman finished by saying, "A curse upon your castle as well, and all who live in it. Every inhabitant shall be trapped in your ugly soul unless you can find love by your twenty-first birthday." She pointed at the rose with her now-lovely fingers and said, "When the last petal from that rose has fallen, all hope is lost." She turned from him as his body turned in on itself, transforming, and as screams erupted from his castle; all his attendants also finding themselves lifted into the air.
The woman looked over her shoulder as she moved away and said, "Good luck to you, beast," before disappearing into the night.
© 2012
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