A/N: Here is my little (hah!) version of Beauty and the Beast. Please enjoy.
Dark Roses
Introduction
A young man stood on a cliff, blue-black hair blowing in the wind. There was an inexplicable sadness in his dark grey eyes, and he watched the wild purple ocean and cloudy grey sky intently.
"Calix?"
The man turned. He smiled at the girl standing behind him. "Yes, Freira?"
"Papa's here. We can go into the cottage now."
Calix leaned down and kissed his little sister on the forehead. "Do not be so afraid, Frera," he said, using his pet name for her. "We'll find a home here."
Freira smiled wistfully at him. "I know, Cal," she said, and sighed. "It's just—well, I know it's selfish—but I just wanted to keep one pretty dress."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and the two began to walk across the moor towards a small cottage on the edge of a wood.
Calix was seventeen when his father, a wealthy merchant, had had all his warehouses burnt down in a freak accident. They had struggled for three years, and finally, Calix's father sold their large house and most of their furniture and clothing in the city, packed up what was left, and moved to his grandmother's old cottage near the town of Vanderwood, which had once been the capital of Imperial Soneh, the country.
Imperial Soneh was in a state of organized chaos, with no one really leading the country but no one really fighting, either. The country was small and neutral, and no other governments cared about their internal relations, so they had lived in relative peace for years, without a king or government.
However, people still followed the old laws because there was nothing else for them to do. One hundred years ago, the young Queen, Calista Cashlyn, had vanished without a trace, and the castle, which had been very near Vanderwood, had also disappeared. The servants were gone as well.
It was said Calista was a witch; that she had been witched; that she had been killed by the servants and they had been witched, but know one knew.
Calix hardly even knew she had existed; as time passed people forgot more and more. When they traveled to Vanderwood, older sister, Minya, had died. His mother had died with his younger sister's birth, and now there was only Freira and him and their father.
The cottage was not much; five rooms that had been kept by an invisible servant, Johann. Freira fell in love with the attic, and convinced Calix and Johann to fix it up for her. Their father could no longer climb the ladder to the attic. Calix chose the small room upstairs; it had a huge gabled window looking out over the edge of the forest, which seemed to be only trees and rambling vines that looked like roses, and gave it the illusion of size. His father, Johnal, was left with the large upstairs room that had tall bay windows looking out over the moor and was still furnished.
Within a few days Johann, Calix, and Freira had made the cottage as home-like as they could. Johnal sat in a corner, reading and occasionally writing small notes. He would look up and smile once in a while, and say something like, "Ah, my dear Frera," or "Calix, you're becoming quite strong."
And they were happy. Vanderwood was kind, although rather liberal and more revolutionary than the city. They were quickly warned about the forest, and told not to stray in too far.
"No one returns," a young man told Calix. "People have gone out and none have come back. Or if they have, they haven't told us."
And so a year passed. Calix became the apprentice to the healer. Freira discovered a love of flowers and gardening. Johann happily wove at a loom, making magical tapestries of legends, and decorated the walls. Johnal began to cook, and they settled into a new routine that was more comfortable than anything in the city.
But then Freira wandered into the forest, and everything changed once more.
She had practically forgotten her name; it had been years, a hundred at least, since anyone had used it.
She was angry, but restricted her destruction to one room, the one that caused her the most pain.
It was long, with pillars and velvet seats and a huge gold throne at the front and portraits of rulers, her at the very end, her black hair straight and long and free, and the crown on her head, and her eyes deep and green and sad.
Huh. Sad.
Now, there was a great tear, several claw wounds, across the face and the canvas, and, in turn, a several festering on her face.
What had she become?
She had been eighteen when, one cold winter's night, while sitting on her throne, her trumpeter had announced one name.
"Laney the beggar girl!"
And the pregnant girl stood at the door.
Her trumpeter, Maxmilien, ran down the hall and bowed at her feet. "She wishes for a place to stay the night. She will pay you with a rose."
She had snorted with laugher. A rose?
But it intrigued her enough to get off her throne and walk slowly down the hall.
She had lifted the girl's chin; her face was dirty and tear-streaked and she couldn't have been any older than fourteen. Huh. She had been fourteen when she had been made Queen; yet this girl seemed so immature.
"Now," she said softly, wanting to kick her out then but instead letting the girl—Laney, if you will—suffer, "What is it you want?"
"Just shelter for me and my unborn baby," Laney said softly. "I have payment—" and she held out a rose.
It was a dark, deep red-purple, almost black but not quite, and iridescent. It glittered slightly—no, just a trick of the light.
She touched the rose—and pulled her hand away, watching the blood drip from her finger with vague interest. "Let's see," she said, softly, dangerously. "Should I let you stay the night?" She leaned in—Dear lords and ladies, what a smell!—and said, voice even softer, "No."
"Please?" Tears dripped from the girl's eyes again. She did not move.
She shook her head. "What did I tell you? No. Now get out of my palace."
The girl threw off her cloak. "Then you will suffer the consequences!"
She was thrown back onto the ground. Maxmilien rushed forward, only to be stopped by the girl's hand. But she was no longer a girl—she was tall, and floating off the ground, her dress long and iridescent, her hair silver and flowing, her eyes golden.
The enchantress stared down at her. "You fail to love."
She lifted her head. "I love. It is caring I do not do, and I do not care by choice."
The enchantress shook her head. "You lie. You fail to love, and you fail to care, because you have no heart."
"I have a heart! I feel it beating every day, spilling my blood through my body, and I am powerless to stop it."
"Silence! You have no heart, not in your soul, because you choose not to. You choose to be indifferent to all and it has killed your people and your servants, and now it is killing you."
She glared at the enchantress. "My people have not died."
"They are poor and suffering, and you have not tried as hard as you could to stop it."
"My servants are not dead."
"Turn around, your Highness."
She did.
Maxmilien was gone; in his place was a pile of dust.
"You—"
"You killed him, Majesty. Your heartlessness. And you will die as well." The enchantress held up a hand as she tried to speak, and the Queen was silenced. "But I give you one chance. If you love, and he loves in return, then your spell will be broken."
"What spell?"
"This spell."
And then there was pain, awful awful pain which wracked her body and she was on her hands and knees and then things changed; her ears were on top of her head and she looked down a black nose and she stood, and her dress hung off her body, her wolf's body.
The enchantress smiled faintly, almost cruelly, "You can still talk." She beckoned towards the rose, lying forgotten on the ground, and it flew into her hand.
"This rose contains two hundred petals; they will fall once a year until it reaches one hundred fifty, and then they will fall twice a year, the next year three times, and so on until they are gone. You have that long to learn to love." And the rose was left, floating at her eye level as the enchantress vanished.
From that day on, she was not Calista Cashlyn. She was not the Queen. She was simply Beast.
She had wandered over to the painting of her the first day, by accident, and seen herself. In her anger, she had ripped her claws through her painted, beautiful face.
Pain tore across her wolf's face; and blood dripped onto her fur. The wound still festered, even after a hundred years.
So she had turned her anger onto all the other paintings, on the velvet cushions where the Court and petitioners sat, on her throne. On everything except the rose and her painting.
The rest of the palace was intact; she slept on a bed and taught herself how to turn the pages of a book in this form. She had not left the palace; vines and roses surrounded it wildly. The only creatures she knew were the cat and her four kittens, which had not been touched by the dust spell and did not age, either.
She lived in her own peaceful hell, until the girl looking for the perfect rose for her brother came.
Freira ran gleefully into the forest, disregarding all warnings of what lay deep in its bowels. She didn't care; the forest was beautiful, with its lovely trees and carpet of roses. But they were pink and white and a light orange-red. Calix wouldn't like that.
She wanted a blue rose, or a black one, or even dark red. But this was, the villagers told her, Rose Forest, and there were roses of all colors in there somewhere, if one could find them and some out alive. Huh. She could come out alive.
She walked for a few hours, she figured, singing and talking with the critters that passed by, not noticing that, as she got deeper and deeper into the forest, it grew colder and colder, and clouds suddenly covered the sky. She was intenton looking for the proper rose.But there were no roses the right color. Calix loved roses, because they had wonderful healing properties and they smelled sweet. Calix was apprentice to the healer, but his apprenticeship was nearly over and soon he would open a practice of his own for those who lived in the country.
Freira suddenly say a bush. Covered in large purple roses.
Purple. A different color. She ran to the bush and discovered a small entrance. Dodging through it, she was suddenly in a garden, large and totally roses. And, in the middle, a beautiful castle.
"Oh," Freira whispered. It was so lovely. Like the tapestry of the Queen's palace in the attic that Johann had cleaned for her.
And it was surrounded by roses of every imaginable color, from green to brown to black, and they were all beautiful.
But she decided on the sweetest-smelling ones, that appeared black at first but were actually and iridescent dark purple-red and, in the sunlight, seemed to glitter. Calix would love them, she thought. They would keep all the smells of bile and blood away from the healing room.
She cut thirteen of them; a baker's dozen, and then three more, to keep for herself. She was sixteen, and her father told her that whenever cutting flowers, cut the number of your age.
Snip.
Snip.
Snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip snip.
She thought she heard as noise; a growl, maybe, or a purr.
Snip.
She heard it again; it was just a waving of a tree branch.
Snip.
Growl.
Or not.
A wolf prowled out of a bush, its bright green and utterly unnatural eyes angry.
And then, to her terror, it spoke.
"What are you doing in my rose garden?"
It was a girl?
Freira threw the roses on the ground and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I just wanted some roses for my brother 'cause he's a healer and he needs them for the smell and the antiseptic qualities and I wanted some that had a pretty color and these were beautiful and—" This was said so fast not even Freira could understand herself.
"I don't give a damn where the roses are going to."
"What?"
"I don't care about it. I don't care about you or why you need them, but you can't leave."
"Why not?"
"You'll tell, and they'll kill me."
"I wouldn't!"
"You would. You're flighty, and you would tell."
Freira stared at the wolf again. It had several festering wounds across its muzzle and face. They were infected and almost green at the edges. Calix could fix that, she thought.
"My brother could fix your face," she blurted suddenly.
"What was that?" The wolf growled and approached her, baring its fangs. Lords and Ladies, it was scary!
"My brother. He's a healer. He could fix your face."
The wolf turned. "No one can fix that," it said sadly.
"My brother could." Freira said, defiantly raising her chin.
The wolf met her eyes squarely. "Fine. Bring him to me tomorrow. He can stay in your place."
"What?"
"Do it!" The wolf advanced and snapped at Freira's hand, pulling skin off two fingers, drawing a bit of blood.
Freira backed away and nodded. "As you wish, ma'am."
She turned and ran, leaving her roses fallen and trampled on the ground.
What had she done?
A/N: As to roses having antiseptic properties--not. This is, however, a different world, so perhaps the roses are different.
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