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Beauty
and a Blood Red Rose
Beauty and the Beast with an enchantress that won't go away, a beauty with too
much curiosity for her own good, and a beast only monstrous in manner. Rated:
PG
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
(incomplete)
Once upon a time there was an unkind prince. One day, a hag showed up at his castle and demanded lodgings for just one night in return for a blood red rose. He declined. Giving him another chance, she asked again, but alas, again he said no. The old hag turned into a beautiful young woman and asked him one last time for him to reconsider. Taken back by her beauty, he finally assents and accepts the blood red rose.
That night, she comes to him in a dream. When he wakes far past
midnight, he runs to her room and finds her up waiting for him. Taking her into
his arms he vows never to let her go just as the first petal of the blood red
rose fell, placing a curse on them both. Unless another woman stumbled upon the
castle, now hidden underneath thousands of climbing rose buds, by his eighteenth
year, he would be forced stay with the witch forever and the illusion of her
beauty would drop. As the curse progresses, he realizes that the love he felt
for the beautiful woman was only part of her insinuated dream.
The first woman to eventually find her way into the castle does so in panic, only two months before the prince’s eighteenth birthday…
Chapter 1
“Aisling! Where do you think
you are going now?” Delaney called after her young charge. The
sixteen-year-old girl was a handful, but her grandmother had left strict orders,
as well as a large compensation for the task, that Aisling be delivered to her
uncle’s house as soon as possible. What should have been a simple two-day trip
had quickly become four days, then five, and they still had at least a days trek
till they would reach his manor.
Aisling’s
mother had been as wild as the forest she loved, and Aisling had been exactly
like her since the day she was born. Her father was a rich merchant and the
fourth son of a powerful lord, but it was rumored that he had stolen his wife
from gypsies rather than courted her in the proper manner. At every turn in the
hall, or road as it was now, they both would stop to examine something, explore
someplace, or talk to someone. Delaney had never meet Lady Sorcha, as she and
her husband both had died of illness when Aisling was merely two years of age,
but the behavior of the woman’s daughter was enough to convince her that she
should be pleased that she never had. Only some could put up Aisling’s
curiosity and Delaney was not among them.
“Child,
I’m much to old for this!” she continued, even though she knew it was
pointless. The girl had not listened to her the previous times she had called
for her, so she was sure not to come back this once. Sighing, the older, stouter
woman followed after the energetic youth with a much greater degree of
difficulty.
The
current object of Aisling’s interest happened to be a yellow bird perched high
in the branches of a pine tree. Determined to get closer to the interesting
bird, she ripped away some of the fabric of her petticoat and heard Delaney yelp
in horror at the latest piece of clothing to be added to the pile of unwearables
due to soiling, soaking, or ripping. So far, Aisling had ruined nearly half of
her traveling dresses due to tripping, an unexpected rainstorm, and mauling by
her own hand. But then, it was the fancy dress that she’d rather live without
or pain to her personage, which she like even less than the first.
After
wrapping the thick cloth around her hands to protect them from the tree’s
needles, she started up the pine.
“No!
Don’t climb that!” Delaney cried from the ground and rushed a little faster.
Unfortunately, by the time she reached the tree, Aisling was too far up for her
to reach. “Aisling, if you don’t come down right this moment, I’m leaving
you up there. How does that sound to you?” she demanded, placing her hands on
her robust hips.
“I
can climb down just as easily as I got up,” Aisling said in her sweet,
melodious voice. Another thing that Delaney was sure that she had gotten from
her mother.
“That’s
not at all what I meant, and you know it! I’m going to leave you here and the
carriage was go off without you. I mean it. So come down here right this
instant!” Delaney’s face began to grow red.
“You
won’t do it, Delaney,” Aisling replied as she reached for another branch.
“Just
try me!” Delaney said and stomped off towards the carriage.
“I
know you better than that,” Aisling called after her form, believing that the
woman was waiting, hidden, after she’d disappeared after a tree. “You’re
just trying to-” Aisling suddenly broke off as the branch she had just grasped
onto broke under her weigh and she tumbled through the branches to the ground.
Her foot hit the ground before her back and twisted as the rest of her body hit
the ground. For a moment she lay on the meager cushioning of pine needles that
had protected her from any severe damage and absorbed what had happened. She had
fallen out of a tree.
Could
that have really happened? Never in her life had she done anything more than
trip over her own two feet, but that never resulted in more than a small bruise
or a dirty smudge. This… she was forced to believe that she had in fact fallen
and been injured as her ankle slowly began to throb.
“Delaney!”
she called in the silent forest. Her bird, as well as all the others in the
vicinity had flown away when they heard the crack of the branch.
There
was no answer, so she sat up and called again, louder this time. And again she
was meet with more silence.
“She…
she really left?” Aisling whispered to herself, more to fill the deathly
silence than anything else. She never thought the older woman would have, she
thought it was a joke right up until the last moment. But… instead it turned
out to be much to true.
“Delaney!”
she tried one more time, her voice raising to a high-pitched scream in a futile
attempt to reach the woman at the carriage. By now, though, they probably would
have ridden off without her and her voice would never reach them.
Desperation
overtook her as she realized that for the first time in her life, she was alone.
Always, she had had a nurse, a maid, a tutor, a family member, or a friend. Now,
though, there was no one and she was afraid. Picking herself up, she tested her
injured ankle to see if she could walk on it and cried out in pain. Tears of
fear and of pain trickled from her eyes and down her cheeks. Using the trees as
support and putting as little weigh on her ankle as possible, she tried to find
her way back to the road.
Night
was falling quickly and Aisling realized that she could have picked a worse time
to let Delaney leave her. Her tears turning into chocked sobs mixed with the
animal sounds of the night until she was no longer sure what noise belonged to
her and what belonged to the creatures awake in the darkness. Exhaustion was
making itself known as well. She had been walking far to long than was possible
to reach the road. Obviously, she had gone the wrong way.
Unable
to take another step further, she slumped back against a tree trunk. Her scalp
itched from the uneven bark that broke away from the tree and fell into her hair
when she leaned back to rest her head against it. Her twisted ankle ached and
her other leg hurt from limping on it. She was hungry since she hadn’t had a
meal since lunch. Her torn petticoat and light cloak were not enough to ward off
the cold. But, the need for sleep won out over all other pains and she closed
her eyes.
After
falling into a dreamless sleep, she was awakened by the howl of a wolf some
hours later. She gasped and pulled her legs closer to her body, searching the
darkness for glowing eyes and glistening fangs. What she saw instead was a
light, nearby from the looks of it. Wondering why she hadn’t seen it before,
she sucked in her breath and shakily stood up. Not caring so much now about her
ankle, she shambled her way through the forest towards the light.
Only
feet away from where she had rested, the trees thinned out and opened up to
another forest, this one of briars. Aisling’s mouth dropped open and all she
could do was stare. She had never seen so many tangled briars in her life.
But… straight through the center of them, a worn path ran into the darkness.
Amidst all her pain and fear, her curiosity made itself know. Once felt, the
only way to rid herself of her curiosity was to satisfy it and at the moment,
she wanted to see what was at the other side of the briars. And so, she took a
step forward, and another and another, until she reached the other side.
A
large castle, wrapped in the thorns, met her sight even in the not-so-darkness.
The clearing it was built in was lit up by the full moon high in the sky. Again,
her curiosity started up and she forgot to be afraid in her confusion of why
there was a hidden castle that she had never heard of before.
Aisling
walked up the steps and stood before the huge orient doors. She paused only a
second before lifting the wooden knocker, carved as a wolf, and letting it fall
three times before the door swung open on its own.