PRINCESS BEAST Read Free

not know if Rune's appearance was inherited or a result of the spell cast on Beauty moments before Rune's birth.  Either way, until tonight, it wasn't an issue worthy of consideration.  She answered Rune by saying: “Your father was a princely beast who is no more.”
    "Bear poopin prat!" Rune screams and a corncob whizzes by Beauty's ear.  It pains her to hear curses coming from her daughter's lips.  She pokes the fire and remembers a time Rune mimicked the songs of birds, the snickering of grey fox, the greeting calls of every wild creature so authentically they followed her home.  How many injured animals had Rune brought to this cave?  At least once a month, she tottered in carrying a sparrow with a broken wing or an orphaned bear cub.  Diligently and steadfastly Rune nursed her charges back to health until the joyous moment she released them back into her forest.
     Fourteen-year-old Rune is sullen, silent, and self-absorbed.  She stays in her room for hours and hours staring at her reflection in a basin of water.  She coated the walls of her hollow with clay and paints fanciful scenes upon the surfaces: sunshine on a field of wild roses, ocean waves rolling onto a white sand beach, a rainbow arcing over a towering castle, the church spires and rooftops of cities, scenes she has seen only in books. Beauty shakes her shaggy head whenever she passes Rune's room, which used to be neat as a pin and now looks as if a herd of wild boar ran amok in there. 
    One afternoon last month, Beauty cleaned the room while Rune was out swimming in Lake Leda.  She thought Rune would be pleased upon her return.   She was not; she hollered at Beauty, "Don't I have any privacy?"
     Lately, it seems I can't do anything right, Beauty thinks.  Just this morning, for example, Rune groused, "You put raisins in the oatmeal.  I hate raisins." 
    "Since when?"  Beauty asked, incredulous because Rune had always considered raisins a treat.  Following a long and uncomfortable silence, Rune asked, "Do you have a cold, Mother?”
    "I do not." Beauty replied.
    "Okay, then why are you breathing like that?" Rune curled her lip and clucked her tongue. 
    "Why are you chewing with your mouth open?" Beauty snapped back, and Rune dashed out of the cave in snit. 
    "You can dish it out, daughter, but you can't take it."  Beauty cried after her. "Do you think me beyond pain?  You are my heart, my raison d'etre."
    Now, Beauty throws a log on the fire, and Rune's water basin bounces off her back.  "Hedge warty snort farty hog!" Rune bellows. 
    "Was I ever that crazy?" Beauty grumbles. Try as she might to conjure the spirit of young Beauty she can only recall years of evading tortures, of striving to be good enough to win affection from her sisters and her father. 
Rune's father . . . maybe his blood is making her crazy.
    Beauty remembers fits thrown by both the Beast and the prince, though the Beast's explosive rages decreased as their relationship progressed, and Runyon's unreasonable tantrums increased after their marriage. Which one is her father? 
    Before realizing what she's doing Beauty sighs a wistful, fairy tale beauty sigh.
     
    * * *
     
    A sneer twists Elora’s blackberry lips.  Croesus scrambles across the floor and jams his head under the Aubusson rug. 
    "Fourteen years--count 'em--fourteen, since she used that inane, breathy habit of beauties," Elora fumes, rapping her nails over the crystal ball. 
    "Look at her, Croesus, a ferocious, fabulous beast reduced to sighing over a hearth.  Croesus?  Get your round noggin up here, you cowardly dust bunny." 
    Croesus sneezes twice and slinks to Elora's side.  He looks into the crystal ball, then slowly turns his head and rolls his eyes to the left like Jack Benny responding to a Rochester wisecrack. 
    "Tell me about it.  What's the big sneeze over paternity anyway?  It's not as if she can get them both on one of those Jerry Springer, Which man's the father of my baby-DNA