Rainbow Tales

Beau and the BeastOnce upon a time, in a small and far away kingdom, there was a young, spoilt prince; his name was Nathaniel. His parents doted on him, and though they were sweet and kind and regal, he was not. He was short-tempered with the staff, the servants, and his peers. He was blessed with good looks: pale skin, big blue eyes framed by dark lashes, thick, curly, auburn hair, full lips, a square jaw, height, and a muscular frame. He was swoon material, and he knew it. Young women were always interested in him, but he wasn’t particularly interested in them. No young woman he met caught his interest, and he often rebuffed them in the cruelest manner. No one dared to complain to the king and queen about their son’s behavior, so they were naïvely unaware. Nathaniel slowly came to realize that he was attracted to other young men. He lingered at training sessions and fighting practices. The muscular arms, shoulders, backs, and chests of boys and men excited and humiliated him. Homosexuality was unheard of; males liked females, and females liked males. There was not a male-likes-male or female-likes-female option. He, on the other hand, would get hard-ons looking at and thinking about certain young men. He even dreamed about them. He m*********d thinking about young men—particularly about Luke—his regular sparring partner. When Nathaniel was eighteen, he was particularly cruel to Isadora, the daughter of his parents’ envoy to the neighboring kingdom to the south. She paid a lot of attention to him, and he made fun of her clothes, her looks, and her attempts to flirt with him. He had the audacity to call her a cow at a court party, and, mortified, she ran out of the party and sought the solace of the gardens. A sobbing young woman in the royal gardens caught the attention of Fairy Kate. “Why do you cry, child?” Kate asked. “Prince Nathaniel was beastly to me. He ridiculed me in front of everyone. He called me a cow,” she sobbed. Fairies, especially fairy queens, did not tolerate extreme vanity in humans, and Fairy Kate was a fairy queen. “Beastly?” Fairy Kate repeated, grinning with a sudden satisfaction. “I like it. Beastly he will become. I’ll test him first, but I have heard about him before. A reckoning is in order.” And with that, Fairy Kate left the young woman and waited. On a stormy night, Fairy Kate sensed that activity in the castle was low. She sensed the young prince near the kitchens and knocked on the back door, transforming herself into the shape of a poor, old woman. A servant answered the door, and Kate asked to be let in from the storm and given a bite to eat. The servant led the old woman into the castle immediately and led her to the fire. The prince, seeing the old woman, was aghast. “What are you doing?” he asked the servant. “My prince, in this storm, we are obligated to give shelter and aid,” she answered. “To this Troll?” he answered. “She is odious. Get her out of here. I will not stand her presence.” The servant stared at him. “My prince, it is not done. You could hurt yourself. She could hurt you.” “That hag? How on earth could she hurt me? She is nothing, a beggar,” he scoffed. “Please my prince, the fairy folk test us. If you fail the test, I hate to think of what could happen,” stammered the servant. “The fairy folk—do you believe in such old wives’ tales? Out! Get her out!” he screamed. Mortified, the servant turned to Kate, “Oh, my lady, have mercy on me. I must obey my master.” “A blessing be upon you, my child. I am not dismayed by you. You tried to warn him,” and she turned and looked at the prince and transformed into her most radiant fairy queen self. Nathaniel was stunned, and he was suddenly afraid. He had revealed his most uncharitable nature to a fairy queen. He couldn’t imagine the punishment. “My lady,” he began. “Silence, it is too late for apologies. You were beastly to Isadora and to me, and so a beast you will be and remain forever more unless you convince a mortal to love you,” she smiled in sweet satisfaction as she spoke the words, because she couldn’t imagine his arrogant personality ever swaying a mortal’s heart beyond the monster she would make him appear to be. She raised her hand toward him, and he felt it rip through him: pain and transformation. His body twisted and grew and sprouted. He grew huge: seven-foot, hair sprouted all over him, his jaw extended with his teeth turning to fangs, his hands and feet transformed into paws with claws. He howled in rage. Rage—human reason in this form was difficult to attain and almost impossible to verbalize—he howled again. The fairy disappeared, and he raged against himself in the castle. He ripped through rooms, destroying everything in his reach. He refused to look at himself in a mirror. Finally, he took himself outside and simply ran on four legs through the forest. He had done this to himself. He couldn’t believe he had been so stupid. His mother had told him story after story about the dangers of vanity and false pride. Zeus and Hermes, the Ancient Greek gods, were notorious for disguising themselves as beggars and visiting humans to see if the unsuspecting humans showed the proper deference to a guest. One old couple, he remembered from the stories, had given the disguised Zeus and Hermes the best of everything they had and had been rewarded with a never-emptying stew pot and a never-emptying wine jug. Hubris, arrogance, human pride, had brought him to this, to being a beast. As he calmed down slightly, analyzing his situation, he realized that he could sense the other animals in the forest. What surprised him was that the other predators were wary and scared of him. Was he so monstrous that he frightened even wolves, bears, and beasts of the forest? Yes, apparently so. When he was absolutely exhausted, he returned to the castle, found his bed, and passed out. The light streaming through the windows woke him the next morning. Nathaniel lifted his head, and he saw himself in the mirror. He was like some kind of werewolf: huge, fury, fanged, clawed, hideous, an animal. He shattered the mirror. He wandered the castle and found that he was utterly alone. His life was horrid for a long time. He ran in the forest and through the grounds. He destroyed different parts of the castle, but he never touched his parents’ apartments. Their spaces were the only places he found holy, touched with the unconditional love they had always shown him and, therefore, worthy of a reverence he had not shown other castle spaces in his rage and anger. The castle provided for his wants and needs. A bath was provided for him at six in the evening, and the family dining room produced dinner for him at seven. Sometimes he ate there, but more often than not, his attempts at civilized eating infuriated him. He could not handle the cutlery with his paws and claws. Even handling the fine china plates and dishes reminded him of how different it had been when he was human. Thus, he often ate in the forest, taking down a deer, a beaver, or some other animal and eating it raw like the beast he was. He longed for company, any company. He had never realized how devastating it was to be isolated and alone. Even the taunting fairy would be better than this abandonment. In fairness, he knew the fairy had not taunted him; she had corrected and punished him for his inappropriate behavior. But this knowledge did not end his loneliness. He started to seek out people—the odd wood gatherer or traveler—but whenever he revealed himself, they screamed and ran off in terror. After several years of misery and isolation, he ran across an old woman who was preparing to camp in the woods for the night. Her grandson was out collecting firewood. She was sitting on log by the fire. She sensed him and called out to him. “Hello, Stranger. Come and warm yourself by our fire. Can I offer you some tea?” she said kindly. It had been so long that Nathaniel couldn’t resist. “I don’t want to frighten you or impose,” he said hesitantly. “Nonsense,” she said laughing at the thought. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Not far. There is a castle through the forest,” he began. He wondered when she would start screaming as he drew close to the fire and to her, but she just sat there contentedly. When he sat down on the ground near her, she reached out with a tin mug of steaming tea for him. He was sure that she could see his face, though he kept up the hood of his cloak, and she could see also his clawed paws, and yet, she did not seem phased. By the light of the fire, he could see that she had light brown skin, dark hair streaked with grey which was braided in a single plait, and dark eyes. He took the mug from her awkwardly and thanked her for it. “You’re welcome,” she answered. “A castle? There was the Brandenberg Castle, but there was a great tragedy there. I thought it was abandoned,” she said slowly. “What is your name?” “I am Nathaniel,” he answered quietly. He couldn’t look at her. “Nathaniel Brandenberg?” she whispered. He knew she knew then, by the way she whispered his name, and their chance encounter was about to be over. She would scream, and the grandson would come, and they would run away and never speak to him again. It was all too much. He started sobbing and choked out his response, “Yes…I am…he,” and he forced himself to look at her. For the first time, he noticed that her brown eyes were rimmed with a whitish blue. Her face searching his, did not fill with terror but with a dawning sadness, and he realized that she was blind. “You can’t see me, can you? What is your name?” he asked softly. “No, I can’t see you, Nathan.” He gasped. His mother called him that. “I am Gwyneth, and I know you beyond your name. Do you know me?” she asked, a smile forming on her lips. Gwyneth was the midwife who attended his mother through her miscarriages and then through his birth. There had been something she had said about his destiny after he was born. He had been told, but he couldn’t remember. “Yes,” he said hesitantly. “You were my mother’s midwife. You birthed me,” he said overwhelmed by the emotions that crashed over him—memories of his parents, his mother, their life as it had once been. He started sobbing again. “I warned her,” Gwyneth whispered. “The night you were born, the stars, the portents were…ominous. The deaths of the others…they would worship you too much, your parents. You could become the kingdom’s undoing. And you have, haven’t you, my child,” she added solemnly. He choked out the words, “It…is…everything…you…say. I was spoilt. I insulted a fairy queen. I…am…a…beast,” he said. She got up then. She was a tiny, little woman, but she sat down next to him and hugged him. He was so stunned at the gesture, at the contact, at the forwardness, that he didn’t resist. He sobbed onto her shoulder, and he realized that she rocked him back and forth against her body. He sobbed harder; he was so lonely. This was the only contact with another human being he had had in so long. “Grandmother?” a voice called, the voice tinged with surprise and alarm. The old midwife released Nathaniel and turned her face to the voice, “Beau, do not be alarmed. We have a guest,” she said firmly. The firewood that had been in the young man’s arms crashed to the ground. Nathaniel saw the young man’s face change from alarmed surprise to full alarm and revulsion as he saw Nathaniel’s face and paws clearly. “Gran, that is not a guest; it is a beast. Get away from it,” and he drew a large knife from its sheath at his side. “Beau, I know what you see, but the beast you see is not all he is. He is a young man underneath, and that is the part you can’t see. Put the knife away and throw some new logs on the fire,” she said commandingly. She waited, but the young man was frozen, gaping at her as if she had lost her mind. “Beau!”